


Lingua Franca

by Anosrepasi



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Booker is slightly more adjusted, Canon-Typical Violence, Drowning, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Nicky drowns au, Nightmares, Other, Temporary Character Death, Very background Andy/Quynh, but only slightly - Freeform, discussions of religion, eventually happy ending, roadtrip bonding vibes but its on a boat, the summary is slightly misleading, this is literally a nile and joe bond while looking for nicky fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:21:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25837177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anosrepasi/pseuds/Anosrepasi
Summary: Nile dreams of a man drowning, over and over and over.And- between every other curveball thrown her way in the last 72 hours- Nile realizes she has to draw the line somewhere between passively accepting it and doing something about it.(aka The Nicky is the one in the iron maiden au that won't stop haunting me - Updates on Tuesdays)
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani
Comments: 606
Kudos: 1065





	1. English

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone, I'm back on my bullshit™ by procrastinating one longfic by getting obsessed and writing another longfic for another fandom I've had take over my life recently.
> 
> General warnings upfront: this has got canon depictions of violence, mild gore, repeated depictions of drowning/temporary character death, and while this canon is pretty great I'm still altering some things about it while keeping others so there's a warning for medical trauma/experimentation in later chapters. Also not necessarily a warning but there are definitely some anti-military viewpoints knocked into this fic, and while action movies sell I don't necessarily agree with the premise that immortal people are best serving humanity's greater interests by acting as a ghost squad. So we'll explore that a bit!
> 
> Otherwise though, I don't have much to say except that this AU has been haunting me for days and once I started thinking it through I couldn't stop thinking about it. If you're looking for an amazing au of this variety (e.g. different members of the team being the ones in the iron maiden- I strongly strongly suggest BeStillMySlashyHeart's [Same Song, Different Lines](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853176) series which is fantastic and is what lit the spark for me on this au idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Graphic depiction of drowning at the end of the chapter

> _" **English** —English is also the lingua franca of international air traffic control and seafaring communications"_

—

Nile doesn’t know what to make of her new life or her new company and in all honesty dinner is nothing but awkward. It's underwhelming and overwhelming in different shades- on one hand she was literally kidnapped by one of the people at this table and on the other they're sitting here eating pasta like it's an average wednesday, minus the 50 year old abandoned scenery and the scattering of empty chairs that makes the table feel too big and too small at the same time. Andy, Quynh, and Booker all eat at the table with her in silence and Nile finds herself being the one to break conversation. She leans back and just sits for a second before speaking, “So are you the good guys or the bad guys?”

Booker glances at her and swallows, “Depends on who you ask.”

“We fight for the causes we think are right.” Andy interjects and Quynh hums around another bite of food. “Sometimes we’d go down as heroes and sometimes the history books disagree with us.”

“Usually, if we can justify saving some lives we count it down as a win and move on,” Quynh follows up, “Enjoy life’s little pleasures in the downtime until we find the next fight that resonates.”

“That’s a lie—” Booker cuts in and points his fork at Andy and Quynh, “’Downtime’ happens maybe once every twenty years between you two and that’s if the world is in a peaceful stretch.”

Nile takes that in with a pause. “How old are you people?”

Quynh and Andy exchange a look and Quynh points leisurely at Booker, reflecting his pose from only a moment ago. “He died in 1815 and he was the baby of the group.”

Nile’s head swings back to look at Booker and gape at the man, who looks no older than his early 40’s. “No way.”

“Yeah, I was fighting under Napoleon. I still avoid Russia when given the choice.”

“That means that you two are older.” Nile returns her gaze to the other two women and waits, the question clear in her voice.

Andy looks away and just mutters something along the lines of “yes” but Quynh swallows her latest forkful of food and just rolls her eyes, “We’re in the ballpark of 4,000 to 6,000 years old. I’m closer to the 4,000 number while Andromache is closer to the 6,000, possibly older but she doesn’t like talking about it.”

“So we actually live forever.” Nile wonders outloud and the mood in the room plummets. Booker looks away and Quynh grimaces. They sit in silence and Nile feels like she’s drowning in whatever minefield she’s just wandered into.

“We don’t live forever.” Andy starts after a moment. “We die eventually, one day your wounds will just stop healing and that’ll be it. There’s no logic to it- how long you’ve lived, how many times you’ve died, one day whatever this force is keeping us alive just goes away.”

“How do you know that? Were there more people like this?” Nile can’t help but chase the statement with the logical question, suddenly wondering how big this table should be and how many others have sat here before.

“We lost a warrior a few thousand years ago, he traveled with me and Quynh for centuries and then one day just stopped healing.” Andy continues, but at the end of her statement she looks to Booker instead of Nile, “To the best of our knowledge he’s the only one who’s died.”

“Just him.” Booker confirms quietly and Nile sits back again. So she can still die, except now there's some sort of statistical probability of it sticking. The risk will still be there every time, not that dying so far has been a pleasant experience or one she’s eager to repeat anytime soon.

Booker looks up and notices her expression, his brows pulling together in concern. “Hey- you should just sit with this for a bit, rather than try and take it all in at once.”

Nile doesn't respond and Booker hears some sort of response in her silence, quietly getting up from his spot at the table and laying a hand on her shoulder, “Come on, you should get some sleep and we can talk more about this tomorrow.”

Booker leads her away from the table and Andy and Quynh’s silence into an adjoining room, with 3 beds set up, two already claimed by Booker’s bags on one bed and what Nile assumes is Andy and Quynh’s belongings on the other. Booker gently nudges her towards the last bed and waits for her to slump onto it before he speaks again. “I hate to do this, kid, but there’s one other thing you should know.”

“More terms and conditions for immortality?”

“Yep. We dream about the other immortals who are alive until we meet them.” Booker says simply. And Nile finds herself nodding thinking about those flashes she had seen, bleeding out in Afghanistan. There had been more than Andy, Quynh and Booker in those flashes, not that she got a good glimpse in those moments. Booker pauses and speaks again, “There’s two others out there, you’re going to keep dreaming of them.”

He says it with a tone of finality and Nile furrows her brows, “Do they have a grudge or something? You all made it sound like this was a team thing.”

Booker gives a mirthless chuckle, “It’s a bit more complicated than that. You’ll understand when you dream about them but I wanted to warn you.”

Booker doesn’t say anything else and takes his leave to return to the kitchen table and his chatting companions, who’ve switched into speaking a language Nile doesn’t understand but would guess to be South Asian in origin. They switch again into what Nile can recognize as French when Booker joins them and Nile lets the sound of the language flow over her even if her mind is too tired to translate the conversation. Eventually she sleeps.

Nile dreams of water, so dark she can barely see—arms and knees banging helplessly on an iron coffin and a man screaming in the space between drowning and waking again. All Nile can taste is salt and she can’t gag when the water is forcing itself into her throat, her own screams muffled into bubbles pulled from her mouth in equal violence. The man keeps drowning, still for moments before he’s pushing at his coffin walls, his frustration and pain overwhelming in its own way as Nile finds herself trapped besides him, spectator and participant in equal parts. So Nile and the man drown, over and over and over and over—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for chapter 1, lovelies. Let me know what you think and if you'd like to scream about The Old Guard on tumblr you can find me at [Anosrepasi](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/anosrepasi).
> 
> Comments water my crops and feed my soul but also this fic is a literal phantom taking up brain space so any additional validation will just be used to feed it and hopefully finish it quickly enough that it doesn't stay a WIP.


	2. French

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back. I'm thinking from here out I'll update once a week if conditions remain favorable? I've got 3 chapters written ahead of this one but have an intense 2 weeks ahead of me work wise so... yeah. Here's to hopefully staying ahead of the game! Also based on the number of comments of this variety I updated the tags and do want to clarify that I'm a sucker for happy endings. It'll probably take a while to get there but like. I'm here for cathartic emotional resolutions and character bonding.

> _**French—** French was the language of diplomacy from the 17th century until the mid-20th century_

Nile wakes up gasping, pulling at the sheets and shooting up until she can pull in lungfulls of air again without it tasting of salt. Andy, Quyne and Booker all sit up with her, startled awake but her choked sounds. Andy and Quynh look ready for a fight and look bewildered when the reality of the situation settles in but Booker looks at her with something a little too much like pity and recognition.

“You could have told me he was drowning.” Nile says once she catches her breath and Booker has the decency to flinch, while Andy and Quyne grimace from behind him where he cannot see their expressions. 

Quynh speaks first, “He told you about the others?”

“He told me there were two more and I’d dream about them since I haven’t met them.” Nile says leaning forward more to rest her forehead on her knees and focus on the air going in and out of her lungs. Booker sits up more while Quynh and Andy shrink down more, and is quiet as he speaks, “You wouldn’t have fallen asleep if I told you what you’d dream about.”

He reaches out and Nile leans into the touch on her shoulder, finding it surprisingly grounding, “I was hoping you’d dream of Joe instead.”

“Who is he? The one in the coffin?” Nile asks back, finding her voice.

“That’s Nicolo.” Andy’s voice rises up from the other side of the room. “He and Yusuf were like us- They traveled together since they met and found whatever causes they thought were worth fighting for to follow. They were in England working to save people from the witch trials and they got caught. The people there picked up on the fact they couldn’t stay dead and labeled them demons. When the traditional methods of execution didn’t stick they decided to separate the two and shoved Nicolo into an iron maiden and threw him into the sea somewhere.”

“We managed to find Joe a couple years later. They had tried killing him so many times they eventually just locked him up in a dungeon to be forgotten about.” Quynh continues as Andy’s voice waivers off. “We didn’t know anything was wrong until they failed to show up at our meeting spot the year we had chosen. We didn’t realize how bad it was until we found Yusuf ourselves and by then it became an uphill battle trying to track down a ship that had sailed years ago.”

“While also not getting caught again as new ‘witches.’ Yusuf didn’t really care at that point though and just cut down anyone who tried to stop us.” Andy says quietly and Nile finds space within their explanation to start breathing normally again.

“So that had to be what, early 18th century? Late 17th century?” Nile asks and Booker gets up and grabs her a glass of water before returning silently.

“Early 1600’s.” Andy says and Nile pauses, doing the math. She freezes and turns to look at them, while none of the immortals will meet her eyes.

“That was 400 years ago. He’s been down there, drowning, for 400 years?”

Booker’s the one who answers, “That’s why I hoped you’d dream of Joe.”

Nile laughs, though she can hear how hollow the sound is to a true laugh, “And what kinda of dreams would that give me?”

“Usually? He’s on a boat.”

Nile’s response is incredulous. “So he’s doing what? Looking for the other one?”

“Never stopped, it took 25 years for him to pause his search long enough to drop in and meet me properly once I joined the group. Up until then I just got parallel dreams of Nicolo drowning and a truly pissed off guy on ship after ship or playing test subject for various diving set-ups.” Booker slumps back on his bed, looking up at the ceiling, “Now it’s just the occasional drowning dream. They get less frequent, the older you get. You should try and sleep again, you probably won’t dream again right after.”

The conversation seems to be at its end and the others quietly chase after the sleep they had been awoken from while Nile hesitates. She lays there, skirting the edge between falling asleep and the fear of her dream returning keeping her conscious until her fatigue wins out and she drifts into a far more uneasy sleep than she had a few hours previous.

—

The next morning, Nile can feel the weight pulling down on everyone in the safe house like a cold fog. It’s quiet, with Quynh and Andy speaking in another unknown language and Booker merely responding in grunts and gestures when provoked. Nile stays as long as she can manage then escapes to the roof of the church through the old belfry. The tiles slide uneasily under her boots but she figures if she falls she’ll just wake up on the ground afterwards if she breaks her neck. She stays there, watching her phone go in out of service and staring at the picture of her mom and brother on the lock screen.

_In service, out, in, out, 5% battery warning-_

It’s not like they offered her a charger through this entire time-

And Nile is suddenly hit with the possibility that this is it, her phone will die and that’ll be the last time she sees her brother and mom’s faces, reflected back on a dim screen. Her hand hovers over the call button and she thinks, one last call just to say _goodbye or miss you or I love you-_

“So you’re the new one.”

The voice is unexpected and Nile jumps to her feet, her footing immediately unsteady and wrong as her shoe slides and she feels herself tipping away towards the edge. A hand strikes out and grabs her elbow, stabilizing her before she can fall completely and topple off the edge. Nile twists in the grip to see who joined her and is met with a man who looks like he just spent the last few months recovering from a near death experience.

The man’s got an eyebrow raised at Nile’s near slip, making the bags under his eyes all the more pronounced against his skin, even more so against the fact his skin looks a shade washed out than what it probably should look, his warm undertones coming out sallow rather than ochre. His mouth is drawn in a thin line and Nile realizes there’s a slight upturn in one corner, a pantomime smile at that.

“You’re Joe.”

“And you’re a quick one, let me guess, you dreamed about me?” He says and his tone is flat, he could be mocking her or amused for all she can tell from him. She shakes her head and the slight upturn on the man’s mouth drops, “Then you dreamed about Nico and they told you about me.”

“Yeah. I wasn’t expecting to meet you, honestly, based on what the others said.” Nile says as Joe releases her arm once she’s regained her balance and they can carefully pick their way back to the Belfry. Joe shrugs, but from where Nile is following him back it just looks like a slight rise and fall of his shoulders. 

“I was nearby and it’s so easy to travel these days that I figured I’d get it over with before the dreams start becoming a distraction like they did with Sebastian.”

“So I take it you’re in between routes then?”

Joe stops for just a moment before he keeps walking, “They told you about that too? Good for them for being thorough. I am, I’m set to sail on Monday from Dover so I’ll be gone again by this time tomorrow.”

Nile follows him back inside and can’t help but exclaim when there’s three guns pointed their way once they descend from the roof. Guns which are quickly averted once the others recognize Joe as the person next to Nile. Andy is equal parts cautious and diplomatic, “We weren’t expecting you, Yusuf.”

Nile tilts her head, “You didn’t come up on the roof via the belfry, earlier?”

Joe small upturn of a smile is back, “There are many ways to get on that roof beside the belfry, kid. You’re a sitting duck up there from a tactical standpoint.”

The easy silence from the night before does not return with Joe’s presence but neither does the oppressive atmosphere from earlier in the day, instead it's a mix as Quyne, Booker, and Andy cautiously dancing around Joe while he answers any comments sent his way with equally flat responses, usually in English if only to give Nile an incomplete idea of whatever conversation is happening. Around the time everyone stops to eat dinner he disappears up the belfry again and Nile spends her time glancing back towards the door wondering if he’ll reappear again.

She only remembers her phone later, pulling it out in a rush to find it’s finally given up the ghost. Booker finds her staring at it and nudges her shoulder gently, “You can get a charger for it next time we’re in civilization.”

She nods, absent and trying to commit her mom and brother’s faces to memory.

That night she dreams of drowning again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same drill, I'm on Tumblr at [Anosrepasi](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/anosrepasi) if you want to scream about the old guard with me.
> 
> Comments feed the validation monster and may not necessarily equate to faster writing but they do act as a buffer for writing blocks, so you know if that's your kind of dnd strategy I'll take it.


	3. Spanish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back. Next weeks chapter might be a day delayed because I'm working until 9am on tuesday and will probably be asleep for the rest of the day.
> 
> Also, ask for the crowd, I'm currently looking around to see if any of my mutuals or followers speak Zenieze/Ligurian and would be willing to help me figure out a few phrases for later chapters in the story. I'm currently making use of an online dictionary and a website that gives the basic strokes of grammar and verb conjugation but I'm 100% it'll still be very off for anyone who actually speaks Zenieze.

> **Spanish** — _Spanish became the language of global trade until Napoleonic Wars and the breakup of the Spanish Empire at the beginning of the 19th century._

That night when she wakes up from her nightmare she holds in her gasps and makes sure not to wake the others, instead slipping out of the bedroom to find the main room of the safe house empty and works her way up quietly to the roof again. Joe’s sitting on the roof, apparently unbothered by the chill as Nile pulls her hoodie tighter around herself and knocks quietly on the wood of the belfry before approaching him. She motions vaguely at the empty space of room next to him and he nods, not turning his gaze away from the sheathed sword on his lap. Nile settles in and glances over curiously, her voice not betraying the scratchy feeling in her throat left over from the dream-taste of salt and water.

“Is that a longsword?”

Joe hums a monotone note, one hand gently tracing down the sheath from hilt to tip. “It is Nico’s.”

“Ah, so you two are also super old then, at least compared to me and Booker.”

Joe lets out a short bark of laughter and Nile feels a little smug at pulling some sort of amusement from the man, who otherwise apparently has the emotional variation of a statue as far as she’s seen over the last day. Joe’s hand stills back towards the hilt of the sword and he sighs quietly, “We met in the crusades.”

Nile head whips around, “The crusades?”

“Mhm, the “first” ones by today’s historical pedagogy.” Joe continues. “Though that’s an inaccurate representation of how truly annoying and persevering the Franks were on their so called holy quest to murder and conquer, as invading conquerors do.”

“So Nicolo…”

“Was one of those Franks.” Joe shrugged, “I want to emphasize the ‘was’ there, in the years since he has made it quiet clear that he strongly regretted the conflicts and his part in them. But at the same time if not for the so called crusades we might not have met or crossed blades with each other. Maybe we would have both just died as ignorant old men, unknowing that the other existed in the world.”

“So you two literally fought each other, in the crusades.”

“In a sense, we killed each other many times but it was also very chaotic and neither of us put it together that we kept running into each other for an embarrassing amount of time. We both individually were aware that we were immortal but it took several months for us to realize that the other was in the same situation.” Joe actually smiles, more than just a ghost of a smile on the corners of his mouth, “When we finally recognized the other and put the pieces together it was like- what’s the expression these days? Ah, a light bulb being turned on. Here is a man who cannot die and who cannot kill me in return, what purpose would such a thing serve unless we were meant to cross paths.”

Nile takes the tale in, trying to picture the uncertainty of it, the knowledge that someone could die and come back again and again unnoticed in a way that was impossible in today’s militarized conflicts. That thought leads far to close to seeing her bags packed on her bunk and the silence of her squad when she had come back to the barrack. She swallows, looking to chase the thought away. “That’s a story.”

Joe snorts quietly, “You know what the ironic thing about that is?”

Joe continues after a momentary pause looking up at the stars above them, “That’s not even the story. That was just the footnote of the beginning for all the rest of our years together- all the time traveling together, learning about each other, the jobs we took together and the things we got to see side by side. The story that matters isn’t that we were on opposite sides and each somehow became immortal, it’s all the living we did with the other as company. We might have come into immortality alone but we were destined to find the other, to walk besides one another, and inshallah, we’re meant to leave this world together when that time comes.”

_Oh._

Joe doesn’t look away from the stars but she can see him tense at her silence. “I see that the other’s explanation of who we are wasn’t nearly as thorough as I thought.”

“They said you two had traveled together for centuries like Quynh and Andy but not that…”

“That Nico is the other half of my soul? That having my heart cut out and being burnt to cinders on a pyre was less painful than the moment they ripped us apart from each other and trapped him in that fucking coffin? That 400 years is a blink of time that I would dedicate to going to the ends of the earth for him, but that every second parted is simultaneously an unending agony? Yes, I can see how they might not have known how to break the news on that.” Joe’s voice is hard and sharp as a blade, and Nile shrinks back just hearing it as if it cut her. She sits shocked for a moment before her mouth finds the words to respond, blunt and unyielding as cinderblocks on her tongue, “I’m sorry.”

Joe’s gaze softens and he seems to fall in on himself, “No, I’m sorry, kid. You are new and young and just had your world broken into pieces from what you knew. You’ve still got some of your worst losses ahead of you and have no right to shoulder blame for a tragedy that happened before you ever existed, even if it wasn’t intentionally directed at you.”

“It’s fine, it’s not like you’re not obviously hurting-”

“But that doesn’t mean I should make my pain a knife to harm others with, vero? Especially those around me gifting me with company and conversation.” Joe replied easily, “I’m sorry, Nile. If you can forgive a bitter old man for his carelessness, I’d rather we part on good terms. It’ll probably be a long time before we cross paths again.”

“Of course.” Nile agrees easily, and they fall into an easy silence until Nile eventually heads back inside to salvage what sleep she can.

—

Booker finds her the next day, trying to page through a book found abandoned on one of the shelves and failing to comprehend most of the words on the page. “So, how are you taking everything?”

Nile gives up on pretending to read and set the book away from her, motioning at the chair next to hers if Booker wants to sit. He does so and takes out a small flask from his jacket, taking a drink before turning his attention back to Nile. Past him, Nile can see Andy, Quynh and Joe talking in the kitchen, voices low enough that only the vaguest sounds travel over to where she’s been sitting. If they’re worried about being overheard they’re overly cautious as identifying the languages they’ve been slipping between since they started talking is a task much higher than Nile’s paygrade. Nile nods towards the other immortals and Booker rolls his eyes, “Not wanting to join in at the adult table?”

“Points to you for being funny, kid, but no. When the three of them actually start talking like this they switch between dialects so much that trying to keep up just makes my head hurt, I’ll stick to talking with the monolingual person in the group.”

“Hey, I’m not monolingual. I know my way around a conversation in Pashto, and I had to take some French and Spanish classes in high school.”

Booker laughs, “You any good at French?”

“Abysmal. I got my required classes done and never looked at it again.”

“That’s a shame, for a second I got my hopes up that I might be able to speak my language with someone other than people who existed before it did. But we’re getting off track- how is all of this-” Booker makes a vague sweeping gesture as if their situation can be defined in the architecture of the church and not in some undefined metaphysical reality kind of way- “settling for you?”

Nile sits on the questions and glances to where the older immortals are still talking absorbed in their conversation, she looks back at Booker again. “It’s becoming more real. I’ve got a question though.”

“Go ahead.”

“What is it that we exactly do here?”

“The usual routine: Quynh or Andy find a cause they think we should fight in, like doing an off-the-books mission, hostage rescue, breaking up human trafficking rings, or some other event usually involving blood- anyway, they convince the other with minimal effort that we should go for it, they convince me we should do it, we prep, do the mission, wipe our tracks and rinse and repeat ad infinum for the greater good.” Booker doesn’t hide the slight sarcasm in his voice as he mentions the last part, “With you now in the group we’ll probably take a few months off for training and figuring out where you fit into the group. Andy said you fought pretty well on the plane and I’m sure there’re skills you picked up as a marine that would balance out nicely but you don’t have a minimum of 150 years of fighting drilled into you- and I’m the weak link of the group.”

Nile raises an eyebrow, “So that’s it? We’re the ghost squad? Any army of three turned four?”

“Pretty much.”

“So what’s stopping me from going home to my family and just living until I can’t hide the fact I’m not aging anymore?”

Booker closes his eyes and grimaces like he’s been stabbed. Nile just has a way with walking into whatever topic her companions don’t want to talk about, doesn’t she? “Booker-”

“Quynh and Andy won’t be able to explain it.” Book replies, fishing for his flask again, “Here’s why they’ll tell you it’s a bad idea: Because it puts us all in danger, them as in your family and us as in team immortal, because it’s hard to mask the fact you don’t age, especially with people you see everyday. Logical, reasonable arguments that don’t register worth a damn.”

He downs whatever is left in his flask, “Here’s why you actually shouldn’t do that: because it’ll destroy you and it’ll turn every single fond memory and feeling you had about your loved ones into ash. Because once it becomes clear that you’re not going to die and they will, that you stay young and they don’t, they’ll start begging you to share whatever your secret is. And you won’t be able to do that because you don’t know why you’re immortal. And when it becomes clear your unwilling to share the secret of immortality, your loved ones will scream at you, call you the most horrible things they could ever call you, and tell you to leave and never come back. And then they’ll be gone, and you’ll still be here left standing with the knowledge that they hated you until the end.”

They sit in silence and Nile doesn’t speak, doesn’t make a sound Booker’s eyes shine and he brings up a hand to push away the beginning of tears before then can fall. Doesn’t make a sound as the conversation in the kitchen lulls and everything suddenly sounds so loud to Nile’s ears.

Booker looks back at Nile, “When Quynh and Andy found me, I laughed in their faces and went back to my family. I got 50 years with them, altogether, before my youngest son died of cancer and spent his last days screaming at me. I found them again after that and spent the next 150 years wondering how much pain might have been avoided if I had just done as they said and stayed dead.”

Nile thinks of her mom, of her brother. Of the fact that she’d have to explain why she’s home and not in Afghanistan, why she’s classified as MIA or worse, deserted and that’s small potatoes. She’d have to fake her death or disappear in the next 25 years when she’s not getting any older. Or she’d have to tell them and risk having it end bad, in a way that can’t be fixed after the fact. And she’d have to live with that, for however long she has left.

All of those feel insurmountable and yet she could cry with how much she misses them, with how much she wants to just say fuck it and head back to Chicago.

“Thank you for telling me.” 

She gets up and measures her steps as she works her way towards the roof, pointedly ignoring the quick glances she’s receiving from the kitchen and the way Booker stays where she left him, twisting the flask in his hands like a rosary.

Her own hand jumps up to her cross necklace and she rubs her thumb over the surface until she’s outside and feels like she can breathe again.

_What the hell is she doing here?_

—

Being outside and away from everyone else isn’t helping much.

She could go back. She could figure something out and find a way to get back to Chicago and get home, or maybe even get back to the Marines and give a too-true tall-tale about getting kidnapped and escaping. Find a way to side step the whole going to Germany for more tests thing they originally wanted to put her through. Serve out the rest of her tour, get out, and spend her time home. Take the wash-out title and run with it, fuck it won’t matter a damn in 50 years anyway.

And then what? Walk out one day to the store and never go home? Push her years until she either has to engineer her own missing persons report or tell her family, “Hey by the way I’m functionally immortal now, it’s not just a good skin care routine”?

She doesn’t want that. She wants to go home but going home means these conditions and never letting her guard down. Going home on her own means being aware of a countdown on the wall that no one else but her can see, ticking down to when she has to give it all up.

She doesn’t want what the other immortals are offering either.

She took her first life 4 days ago and got her throat cut in return. Maybe that was fitting. A life has an intrinsic value and maybe she forfeit hers the moment she shot her target in Afghanistan. Except now the rules are different.

Sure, her life is still on the line with every mission but how does that balance out, what kind of jobs do you take on if you’re statistically unlikely to get killed by them? If a mission would otherwise be skipped over because the risk of death was too high, what kinda of things do you do when you can take those missions without much concern? How many lives are forfeit then, when safety in numbers or secure positioning no longer carry the same guarantee of safety?

Nile didn’t sign up for that.

She sighs and rests her head against her knees, breathing in and out. She needs to figure out what she’s going to do, because both what she wants and what she’s expected to do aren’t something she can commit to. Not right now. And she won’t be able to just keep haunting an old ass church pretending to read while people talk around her.

Nicolo comes to mind without conscious effort and Nile feels guilty momentarily for complaining about her situation when his is exponentially worse.

_Nicolo._

Nile stumbles to her feet, spinning in place and racing across the roof towards the belfry and jumping down the steps to get to the back area, nearly colliding into Booker, who has a handgun ready the moment he sidesteps Nile, pointed at the floor but scanning over her shoulder for a threat. “Nile?”

“Where’s Joe?”

“He just left out the back way a few minutes ago- wait, what’s the problem?”

“No problem, just gotta talk to him-” She shouts back, twisting around the pews and heading towards the rear doors. She hasn’t be back this way before but if she’s fast maybe she’ll catch a glimpse of him before he makes it to where ever he parked his car-

“Joe!” She shouts once she’s outside and takes off running, jumping over branches into the copse of trees. She scans in front of her for movement and only dodges the arm reaching out to grab from behind one tree by a hairs breathe, already turning to fight back when Joe is suddenly right next to her, sticking a leg out to trip her on the next step.

A trip which has her going down hard, but all things considered she found who she was looking for.

“You know the whole purpose of a safe house is to keep them secret, yeah? Andy would be absolutely pissed to lose this one if police get called because of someone screaming in the woods.” He doesn’t seem very amused by Nile’s efforts but they did their job, and he’s offering her a hand to help her up still.

“It got your attention, though.”

“I’ve got a schedule to follow, kid, they know how to reach me if it’s something important.”

“This is- or I hope it is.” Nile shoots back, brushing off the dirt and straightening up. “Look, can I come with you? To help find Nicolo?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same song as usual, find me on Tumblr at [Anosrepasi](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/anosrepasi) if you want to gush about The Old Guard with me or also read through the wonderful meta I reblog from people much smarter than myself. Comments help me survive my work week and have the mental energy to start writing on my days off, Kudos make me smile and have a bounce in my step, all are appreciated. :)
> 
> Also- in an effort to highlight how wonderful this fandom is and acknowledge how other fics and writers have shaped my understanding of this world I'm going to try and start linking one other fic or series I've read that I adored in the end comments for each chapter.
> 
> This week's rec is Wind_Ryder's [Methuselah's Children](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839811) series which is a saga I cannot describe just. Plot? spot on. Characterization? nuanced and deep beyond measure. Feelings? this series will give you every emotion known to man. I strive to write like Wind_Ryder and develop a world as intricately as they do.


	4. Portuguese

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back lovelies. It turns out I didn't have to work last night so chapter is on time this week. Thank you for all the wonderful comments and kudos so far!
> 
> Warning: graphic depiction of drowning near the end of the chap

> _**Portuguese** —Portuguese served as lingua franca in the Portuguese Empire, Africa, South America and Asia in the 15th and 16th centuries._

Joe looks at her and Nile can’t help but think of the phrase ‘bluescreening.’

“What?”

Nile goes on the defensive. 

“Look, I know I’m new and I’m not as experienced as all of you with this whole immortality thing or staying secret, but I grew up with all the new tech you guys had to learn second-hand, and maybe I can contribute to the search, if nothing else the Marines gave me a primer in tracking people down under bad odds and-”

“Nile, slow down.” She cuts off and Joe rubs a hand over his face, looking up briefly before turning his gaze back to her, “You want to come help look for Nico?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The question comes off as a statement, heavy as a stone being dropped into a pool of water.

Nile frowns and crosses her arms but takes her time speaking, “Because I don’t think I’m cut out for what Andy and Quynh consider ‘the greater good’ or their way of going about it. I don’t think I can go back home either, not right now at least.”

“They won't force you to join the team, if you truly want out they’ll stay with you long enough that you have your bearings and part ways after that.” Joe says, his eyebrows scrunching together as he takes in her reasoning. His frown deepens, “I can’t teach you how to be immortal, Nile. Every moment I’m not looking for him is one he spends drowning, every distraction I engage in is an addition to this hell he’s experiencing. I leave here with a purpose, and I will not deviate from it. Whatever you’re going to learn from here on out would be on your own if you come with me, nor will I do anything differently, even if it conflicts with your comfort or safety. I’ll chose him, every single time.”

“I understand.”

Joe lets out a humorless laugh, “I don’t think you do, kid, not by a long shot. I have been looking for centuries, and as much as I wish that wasn’t the case, statistically having spent that much time on it doesn't mean a damn thing about being any closer to finding him. You haven’t committed to anything like this in your life yet.”

“Then this’ll be first. I can’t just pretend everything is fine when I’m dreaming about this guy suffering every night.”

Joe’s sharp edges seems to crack, like glass turned on the wrong edge and shattered.

“The dreams will go away in time. They did for Booker.”

“But Nicolo won’t, will he? If I dream about him or not, he’ll still be down there unless you find him.”

Joe inhales sharply and closes his eyes.

“Until not unless. I am going to find him.”

“And I want to help, even if it just means you’re not doing this alone.”

Joe opens his eyes and levels her with a flat look. He gently grabs her arm and starts pulling her back towards the church, “Alright. We have wasted enough time, come on.”

Nile just nods and lets herself get pulled forward; apparently that was the end of that discussion. She pulls her arm back numbly and follows Joe back, flinching slightly when on opening the door he yells something in to the other occupants in what she guesses is Arabic, basic on the sound of it. Andy storms around a corner, her answer just as sharp, and based on body language and tone is the exact opposite of whatever Joe had said.

Booker appears a moment later, followed by Quynh who goes to stand by Andy and also yell back at Joe. Booker makes eye contact with Nile and works his way over to her, avoiding, the three older immortals as the volume of their discussion begins to hit shouting levels, “So why are they yelling at each other and what exactly did you do?”

“I asked Joe if I could go with him to look for Nicolo.”

“Ah.” Booker frowned, “That would explain him yelling, not why they’re yelling though. So is this what you’ve decided to do?”

Nile nods, shrinking away a second later when Andy points at her while saying something that has Joe sighing and gesturing in response. ”I don’t think what you’ve got going on with Andy and Quynh is what I’m meant be doing now. My gut says going with Joe is the best chance to figure out what’s the right course of action.”

Joe seems to catch the mention of his name and turns, narrowing his eyes at Booker and Nile, “Why are you just standing there? Grab your stuff, we’re leaving in 5 minutes max.”

“So I’m going with you?”

“4 minutes. Yes, was that not clear?” Joe returns his attention back to Quynh when the Vietnamese woman laughs and switches to English as well, “Joe, you didn’t even tell her she was coming with you. You can’t expect us to just let you walk off with her and call it fine.”

“She volunteered. I agreed to it. End of discussion.”

“No, not end of discussion, Yusuf.” Andy cuts in, “She’s new, she needs to learn about what we do and how this all works- you’re not in a position to teach her that, hell you barely do the minimum not to get discovered yourself between routes.”

“If y’all are done discussing over me,” Nile interrupts, returned with her dead phone securely in her pocket and her few pieces of clothing in her arms, “If Joe’s allowing me to come with, I’m going with him. It’s what I want to do.”

Andy sighs, turning her attention away from Joe who’s still snapping back and forth with Quynh. “Nile, I know this all a lot and we probably could have introduced you to it more gently but what Yusuf does isn’t living, it’s torture and it’ll kill you slowly. We’re not made for impossible tasks, even if we’re immortal.”

“And he’s been doing it alone for this long, which doesn’t seem to be doing him any favors either.”

Booker’s voice mummers up as he shuffles around for a few items in the living room before coming back to stand with Andy and Nile, “If it matters at all, I think Nile’s right about this one.”

“Booker-”

“Boss, you never got the dreams I did back before I met Joe. They were miserable. Maybe Nile’s right on the fact that if he’s going to keep looking he should have someone looking with him.”

Andy looks between Booker and Nile and her mouth pinches in a hard line. “Fine. But we won’t be there if something goes wrong.”

It’s not meant as a threat or a promise, just a hard fact to what Nile’s committing too.

“I know, thank you for everything you’ve done for me so far.”

“Stay safe then, you’re far too new to have your immortality go away anytime in the next couple of centuries but you shouldn’t take extra risks just because you can walk them off.” Andy replies, before turning, “Quynh, she’s going with Yusuf.”

The other conversation in the room cuts off abruptly and Nile can see Joe already heading towards the door. She makes to follow him and Booker catchers her hand before she can leave completely. He drops a small smartphone into her hands, before pushing her towards the door. “Keep your real phone off, call if you need to get in contact with us.”

Nile smiles, already sensing she’ll probably end up missing him more than she’d think from their few days spent knowing each other. “See you around?”

“Probably in like 10 years. Don’t let Joe leave you here, he won’t hesitate to do it.”

—

Joe didn’t leave her, but he did tell her if she had taken any longer he would have driven off.

She takes that as his first lesson, though she has no plans on telling him that. Just nods, thanks him for waiting, and watches the French countryside fly past as Joe drives them towards a coastline. The blur of colors are hypnotic and Joe doesn’t have the radio on so after a while Nile finds herself struggling to keep her eyes open and leans her head against the window, slipping into sleep.

She dreams of the drowning, but this time it’s quiet. Nicolo is not screaming, but he’s still pulling against his chains and beating against the coffin. He’s still drowning, and still alive obviously, but now it’s like he’s inhaling the water in gasps, trying to form sounds around the saltwater in his mouth. It doesn’t feel like it had in the previous dreams, it hurts more than anything else, the ache in her lungs combined with the ache in her entire body like after she’s been sobbing.

“Hey, kid, wake up- Nile, wake up.”

Nile jolts back into consciousness, and Joe withdraws the hand he’s just been using to shake her shoulder between glancing at her and keeping his eyes on the road. Nile sits up, wiping a hand at her face and pulling it away when she feels the wetness there. She fishes around the backseat for an unopened water bottle and drinks half in quick succession while Joe just keeps his eyes firmly focused ahead of them. “Bad dream?”

“Mmm.”

Joe’s grip on the steering wheel tightens and Nile notices they’re driving along a coastal road now, one side of the car held flush to a cliff wall and the other overlooking open water. Nile stares and Joe exhales quietly, “Enjoy the view while you can, you’ll get sick of it after a while.”

He looks over once, than back towards the road. “We’re almost there. Our ride over to Dover won’t show up for another hour or so. If you open the glove box-” Nile does so and is rewarded with the view of a thick roll of euros stuffed into the corner. Quite a few euros, when she looks at the actual bills. “Take those and go into town when we get there and get anything you’ll need for a month long trip. My advice is focus on warm and waterproof, if you dress for Afghanistan, you’re going to be miserable.”

“Noted.” Nile says, tucking away the roll into her pocket, “Anything else I should know?”

Joe gives her a sidelong glance. “This is your last chance to tap out if you have any hesitations about coming with me. The others are close enough that they could find you without a problem from here.”

“I said this would be the first and I meant it.” Nile replies, though she appreciates that Joe is still trying to give her an out, as if the drive and space was all she needed from the others in order to fit in, “But you saying that reminded me to buy a phone charger, so thank you for that.”

Joe exhales, “I forgot how utterly stubborn young people are.”

“Sounds like a personal problem, old man.”

Joe actually laughs at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> usually rodeo: Comments and Kudos feed the writer's brain gremlins. I can be found on Tumblr [@Anosrepasi](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/anosrepasi) if you want to fan out about the Old Guard with me. Ask me questions if you ever have questions, i fuckng love questions.
> 
> This weeks rec is a terribly underappreciated reincarnation au by wlan called [We were born alone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25951153/chapters/63082075) which has such a unique take on the the immortality power having limitations and like. Booker and Andy being in the background being hilariously cryptic. I'd love to see this fic get some more love and comments so if you read it please leave the author something even if it's just a quick, "Hey this is great!"


	5. Latin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again lovelies. Wanted to start off this chapter saying that as we get farther into this fic I am not Catholic nor Muslim so if you are and see a glaring inconsistency or something that's incredibly off-base for characters of long standing religious beliefs please let me know and I'll get it fixed asap. That being said, I'm also acknowledging that no person practices religion perfectly and I try and address some choices (e.g. conversing after Isha prayer) in the text (next chap). But yeah, I am concerned about making sure to portray Joe as respectfully as possible, especially given that as a white past-christian individual I need to be aware of blind spots that can have racist or islamophobic connotations if I don't actively do my research so. if y'all see anything, that's on me and I'll get it fixed.
> 
> Also, thank you for all the wonderful comments! I just want to let you all know I save responding to a chapter comments until the next chapter is up and I reread them through the week constantly so thank you for giving me such gifts when my response rate to them is delayed :)

> _**Latin** —Latin, for a significant portion of the expansion of the Roman Catholic Church, was the universal language of prayer and worship._

By day 10 Nile has to concede that she really doesn’t add much value to the mission.

Which, to be fair, aside from her general ingenuity, she knows she doesn’t have the background to be a whole lot of help on a mission to find a person at the bottom of the ocean in an undisclosed location. Going into this she had no illusion that something about her presence would unlock the secret to where ever Nicolo is located when 400 years of previous searching hasn’t made a difference. Ironically, Nile finds being aboard the research vessel to mirror her experience with the immortals in France, still awkward and underfoot but far less personable.

The crew treats her presence with a polite professionalism of people going about their jobs while their boss walks around giving strangers a company tour. That is to say they acknowledge her briefly then return to what they are doing, slotting in Nile’s bunking and presence on the ship with the same detachment they had when she had first walked aboard. Joe had been brief in his explanation, “Most of them know what we’re searching for and the very few who don’t are paid well enough to not care or look into it too deeply.”

The man himself has become a ghost once they cast off, though Nile catches enough glances of him to figure out that he probably is splitting his time equally between the lab where footage from the ship’s ROV is analyzed and a room Nile has begin referring to as the map room—for obvious reasons. The entire room is covered in navigation charts of the Atlantic ocean ranging from modern times to the early 1600’s. The maps in turn are equally covered in swatches of marker, identifying previous searches, wide blocks of possible areas and other small scribbles identifying Joe’s thought process in his search. There’s nothing else in the room except for a large table, a few chairs and the maps but Nile has the sinking suspicion that Joe might as well sleep in that room based on how often he seems to be there, regardless of hour.

So Nile inserts herself into her strange new surroundings and tries not to get in anyone’s way, which proves to be a challenge for about 3 days until she’s figured out the flow of the crew and then it’s more natural than finding her sea-legs which take an additional day or two to master. In the meantime she has the tablet Joe had given her on the first day, loaded with maps and more books on English naval trade routes from the 17th century than Nile thought was possible. She appreciates his attempts to catch her up, as abstract as they are, and she understands where he’s coming from- _If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles_ , and all that. It seems Joe’s banking on the same logic helping to identify where circa 1600 English ‘witch hunters’ would decide to drown someone alive.

And for a few days that’s enough to occupy her time until it becomes clear that the human brain can only take in so much when it comes to nautical rotes from 400 years ago. 

That’s another similarity to France, the boredom.

And boredom is bad- It gives Nile too much time to think, to start asking the same questions she had been forming at the safehouse in France. In down moments she can start asking herself things like _Does my squad care that I’m gone-gone or did they feel relieved? Do they think I deserted or something happened? Have they notify my family yet? Did they mark me down as MIA or KIA?_

She doesn’t want to think about those questions, and she doesn’t want to think about why she’s here on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic when she dreams about the reason almost every night. 

So she does what any sane, self-motivated person would do and distracts herself by setting up her own schedule. It ends up looking a lot like her time off duty, in all honesty- working out on the deck when conditions are favorable, conjugating different verbs and running through imaginary conversations in Pashto, Spanish and French under her breathe and otherwise trying to figure out ways to keep herself mentally occupied and physically exhausted enough to fall asleep each night.

And then she dreams of drowning, or the desert- a new clockwork to her schedule that she _can’t_ control.

Thus starts a new tradition, slipping away from the crew quarters to go find a secure spot on the ship’s deck where she can shake off the remnants of claustrophobia and phantom deaths. And that’s how tonight would go if she hadn’t almost immediately run into Joe.

She’s not paying attention as she heads to the door separating the hallway from deck access, fiddling with her cross so her hand doesn’t drift to her neck, when she looks up at the last second and jerks to the side as Joe walks through the door. He’s obviously paying attention, sweeping to the side like a dancer and shifting the small rolled-up rug he’s carrying in his left hand to his right so it doesn’t collide into Nile. His eyes sweep over her with the same easy grace as his movement, “You know it’s dangerous to go onto deck at night alone.”

Nile has no shame in pointing out a double standard, “Like what you were just doing?”

“Hey, prayers get an pass in most countries and in international waters, freedom of religious observation.” 

Points to him for being witty, Nile concedes quietly.

“And I’ve also got a lot more experience than you with drowning and what to do if I fall overboard.”

Nile shudders and Joe’s witty attitude drops off, “Dreams keep you up?”

“Yeah, I just- I’d feel better not being surrounded by walls.” Nile replies and Joe nods, starting to move past her in the narrow hallway. Nile takes that as close enough to permission as she’s going to get and slips out onto deck looking for a spot where she can lean against a wall and look out at the water if she wants but stay a reasonable distance away from the railing. She plugs in her earphones and settles in, only to look up a moment later when she feels someone walking up to her and looks up to find Joe standing above her, prayer mat gone and obviously trying not to look intimidating while towering over her. She pulls out on ear bud and he motions to the deck, “Alright with some company? That way you’re not in violation of the ship’s safety rules.”

Nile is starting to suspect that beneath his driven and rough exterior, Joe is an unbearable smartass.

She nods and he promptly lays down on the deck, arm thrown behind his head as a pillow as he stares up at the stars. Nile speaks up after a moment, though the silence hadn’t been overwhelming. “You don’t need to babysit if you’re just worried about me, I’ve been out here almost every night.”

“I do actually like being up here for my own reasons,” Joe replies “Looking out at the stars here always reminds me of better days, in the desert. Same stars, even if the surface I’m laying on is very different.”

Nile hums in acknowledgment and they fall back into companionable silence for roughly 5 songs before Joe speaks again.

“So how are you adjusting?”

Nile can’t help but laugh and Joe just gives her a questioning look, “That’s not my answer—sorry—it’s just what is it with you all and asking me that exact question?”

“Unfortunately it’s the obvious question, if not original. If it makes you feel better I could try and fight the answer out of you like Andy, or drink it out of you like Quynh, though that might be Sebastien’s gimmick now for all I know.” Joe’s voice is fond, and Nile realizes this is the first time they’ve talked about the other immortals without the sense of division between the two, Joe and Nicolo as one unit and the remaining three as another. It’s nice, and Nile giggles at Joe’s suggestions.

“Booker just kinda straight up asked me, like you did.”

“Ah, that’s pleasantly surprising. I can’t claim to know the man well but I’m glad to hear he wasn’t asking under the duress of alcohol.”

Nile half shrugs, remembering the flask and the conversation that had followed that. She pauses and weighs her words before speaking, knowing that the following question might be as destructive as her questions to Booker had been. “How would Nicolo do it, ask how things are going?”

Joe stills and Nile tenses, waiting for an outburst or for Joe to get up and leave without a word, she expects him to react the same way she would if confronted with the conversation shifting to a painful topic. On the other hand, she can’t help herself but ask. She can list the number of things she knows about Nicolo on one hand and half of them are detailed descriptions of how he’s suffering, not about who he is as a person, about why he and Joe are so close that Joe has willingly given up 400 years of immortality focused on finding him.

And maybe she’s being unreasonable, but she wants to know more about this man other than what he’s like when he’s dying. She wants to be able to associate him with something else, something better.

And Joe surprisingly obliges her.

“Food,” Joe says quietly after a pause, “Nico would butter you up by trying to make you something to eat, then once you’ve started eating he’d blink at you from across the table and ask with completely feigned innocence. It’s the former priest in him, it’s awful.”

Joe says the word awful like it’s a strawberry, something sweet and refreshing and in all implications the exact opposite of the word awful.

Nile finds herself blinking back, “He’s a priest?”

“That’s another ‘was’ for him, left the position to join the crusades and never picked it back up again- he kept the faith though, and we had our own adventures sharing that side of ourselves with each other, once our communication skills got past the gesture and basic concepts stage.”

Nile fiddles with her necklace again, the small cross twisting in her hand. Andy had been pretty well, antagonistic, when it had become clear that Nile was religious, citing her age. Here though she could obviously see that Joe had maintained his faith in Islam after 900 years, if that had been his initial faith. The fact that Nicolo was apparently the same way was reassuring, one less area of her life where she felt the floor might drop out from under her. Joe was looking over at her now and his gaze softened as he saw her play with her necklace, he spoke gently in turn. “Being immortal means whatever you think it means, in regard to your faith, but it doesn’t negate it.”

“That’s actually really reassuring,” Nile confesses, “Though I’m sure you two have seen some crazy things related to trends and changes in doctrine in all those years.”

“You have no idea,” Joe’s brought his hands up to cover his face but Nile could swear he’s smiling, “You should have seen Nicolo read Dante! He’d just sit there quiet as a mouse, but you could tell he was getting increasingly worked up because he would just start scrunching up his nose right here—”Joe’s throwing his hands into the air before pointing to where the bridge of his nose meets his brows “—and he would just sit there and keep reading and then set the book down, then later he would go on an absolutely unprovoked rant about how Alighiri’s adaption of heaven and hell were out of proportion and tacky. He did that for a week! That’s not even touching on when he found out about the pope fiasco in 1410.”

Nile finds herself gasping and exclaiming in surprise, and Joe’s smile doesn’t fade as he turns towards the sudden noise. “My brother does that! The whole nose-thing! If he thinks whoever’s talking is full of it he’ll just stand there all impassive but he’ll start scrunching his nose slightly, and then he’ll just give you this _look._ ”

Nile tries to imitate the expression but can’t hold it after Joe starts bursting into laughter. She starts giggling as well and for a moment they just sit there and laugh, and it feels so good to do that. Nile’s giggles die away eventually and she mentally stumbles for a second as she makes a second connection between Joe’s stories and her memories.

“My mom-” she starts and Joe turns his attention back to her, “My mom does the same thing Nicolo does if she’s trying to get you to talk to her. If we ever had a bad day, she’d try and always make a home-cooked meal—which, for context, she was a single mother of two kids after my dad died, home-cooked meals are a luxury—but she’d make us a meal and sit us down and then wait for us to start eating and just go “sooooooo” and that’s how you knew she got you.”

Nile sniffs and quickly passes her hand across her eyes, trying to push away the gathering tears. God, she misses them. She misses them so much. Joe’s quiet and she can see him sitting up now, propping up his arm on a knee while facing her. “You ok, kid?”

Nile wipes away a few stray tears and inhales, holding it a breath before exhaling slowly and willing herself to get her eyes but under control. “Yeah I just, I just really miss them, you know?”

Joe hums a note in acknowledgment and his next words are gentle, “Have you thought about going to them? Like what Sebastien did?”

“Booker made the case that I don’t do that.” Joe’s giving her an unreadable look, his eyebrows furrowed, “And at this point I just think there’d be too many questions for me to handle on my own. Last time I checked as far as the real world is concerned I effectively up and vanished off a base in Afghanistan. So they either think I deserted, am MIA slash possibly kidnapped, or dead. I can’t just show up to my mom’s house in Chicago and go “surprise!” That’s not even starting to unpack if my mom’s been notified of any of this at all or if the Marines just decided to write me off like they’ve done for any of the other women who’ve ‘disappeared’ under sketchy circumstances on base before.”

Joe sits on this, and Nile can appreciate how he doesn’t immediately jump to respond to her concerns, either to minimize them or have a solution. “This time in history has a lot of amazing aspects and technology, especially when you’ve seen the progress over 900 years, but it leaves you exposed in equal measure. I can see how what was a simple deception for Sebastien is a much more involved choice for you—one that you don’t necessarily have the right resources or training for to be safe and keep your family safe in equal measure.”

“I’d have to tell them about this too, or push my luck and fake my own disappearance again in a decade once I can’t keep hiding that I’m not aging.”

“Why not just tell them?”

“Booker made it sound like from his experience that was the worst thing he could have done.”

Joe tilts his head to the side, frown clear on his face, “I was unaware of that. From what I could see about his time with his family they were… happy, for lack of a better word for almost all of it. You could see the love he had for them and the love they gave him in return.”

Joe looks away then. “This will sounds petty, but I was envious of him, that first half-century when I dreamed about him. The new immortal who was surrounded by what must be his family, living his life and dealing with mundane hardships and accomplishments. I hated dreaming about him because it was a constant reminder that those terrified children in England had taken Nicolo from me and denied me equal opportunity to have what Sebastien was experiencing. I avoided seeking him out, because even if I dreamed about him I didn’t want to have to face seeing this man’s fortune with my own eyes. So I avoided it, and shouldered through the dreams until I could practically ignore them. Then they changed, and it took me a lot longer to notice than I should have.”

He lets out a chuckle, flat and hollow. “I started seeing Andy and Quynh in my dreams again, and it took a year or two after that to piece together that Sebastien was no longer with his family but with them. Once I started paying attention it also became clear that he was miserable, even though he tries hiding it from those two. And then I was left with the knowledge that while I had been so envious of this man’s fortune that I was now the witness to his life when he outlived all those he loved. I watched him drink himself into numbness and throw himself into whatever tasks Andy and Quynh struggled with in order to distract himself from his loss and I felt ashamed. I could have stopped the dreams at any point by making a detour and passing him in the street, instead I held onto my anger and my envy and wallowed in it and prayed to Allah to free me from seeing this other man’s reality. And I was rewarded for my pride and anger with a swift reminder that my suffering and my challenges do not supersede those of faced by other people, that my pain is not somehow more significant just because it’s mine. It was humbling, and it was a lesson I needed to learn, before I allowed myself to keep straying down a path that was not true to me just because it was easy to do so.”

“So why wait another, what, 25 years to meet Booker? Repentance?” Nile asks and finds herself feeling cold. It feels wrong, listening to Joe talk with such clarity about Booker’s experience when the man himself isn’t here, as if this weird dreaming bullshit gives them the right to see another person down to their core- completely vulnerable and completely visible. Booker had alluded to how being with his family had ended but this was too close, too invasive to be shared by anyone but by Booker himself.

“I was ashamed,” Joe shrugs, falling back onto the deck again. “We might be immortal but we’re still flawed human beings, Nile. 900 years does not mean I’m suddenly wise and incapable of weakness, it just means I have more opportunities to attempt to address the harm I cause and to do better in the future. I was scared of facing Sebastien, paranoid that he’d take one look at me and know that I’d been witness to his life and make me face up to that. So I put it off, until I couldn’t anymore, and then I promised myself that next time I’d do better.”

Nile snorts, “Is that what this is, doing better?”

“To some degree, maybe? It’s not like being kind to you will balance out the fact that how I handled Sebastien was a mistake, but on the other hand you both deserve kindness and if you’re going to be around me, I should make a conscious effort to treat you with that respect.”

Nile pulls her knees in close and snuggles her chin over them until she’s wrapped up in her own embrace, contemplating on the man in front of her. “It’s funny, but out of all of this, all I can think is that you should probably try getting to know Booker yourself. Outside and very unqualified opinion here, but I actually think if the situation had been different, you two might have been good friends.”

“As in a situation where we didn’t spend 75 years projecting our emotions and reality at the other person without consent or…”

“Not even that, I meant if you two actually spent some time together, or had a hobby in common or something. You both are smartasses as a default when you’re not being super serious and it’s obvious you both care about other people and have a lot of feelings on that.”

“I am being psychoanalyzed and given friendship matchmaking advice from a very wise child,” Joe says flatly, “This is not how I expected the conversation to go when we started talking.”

“Not my fault I keep it real.” Nile shrugs, “But actually, maybe think about it for after you find Nicolo. This immortality thing is kinda a lot and it seems like it’s a lot more manageable when you’re spending it with people who you actually like and who also get it.”

“You know it works the other way around too,” Joe shoots back. “It sounds like right now you’re still struggling with your choice about what you’re going to do from here. That’s doesn’t have to be a solo effort, even if it means what you end up doing looks different than what the rest of us are doing. Just because we’re all older than you doesn’t mean what we’ve chosen to do with our lives is what you have to do.”

And there was the crux of it, wasn’t it? She was going to have to figure out what she was doing and what she wanted to do in the future. She would have to make another decision like she had in France, one that didn’t sometimes feel like a pause in her life but one that would have implications for the rest of her however-long life she’d be expected to lead. Her answering laugh is shaky and she hates it.

“I don’t think I’m ready for that conversation yet.”

“You have time to figure it out, even if it doesn’t feel that way. If you want to talk through it at any point, feel free to use me as a sounding board.”

Her next chuckle is more solid and Nile leans her head back and looks up at the stars, “Thank you. And thank you for letting me tag along with you.”

Joe shrugs from where he’s still laying on the deck, “I think you got to the heart of it earlier, this immortality thing is better with company, even if it’s just for the sake of having company.”

After that, it’s easy to get lost in the stars, the silence between them sitting comfortably between them the same way it had on the roof of the church a few weeks ago—just another reflection as she learns to navigate this new life of hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and Kudos make me smile throughout my work week, more content and engagement can be found at [Anosrepasi](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/anosrepasi) on tumblr.
> 
> This week's recommendation(s) are Stonecarved/Figure8's [as an ancient city](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25755001?view_adult=true) and [for all hearts torn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26122834/chapters/63545764). Both are great fics, I'm very excited where they take for all hearts torn. Stonecarved's meta on Tumblr has been super formative to how I conceptualize Joe, especially as someone with a Tunisia/Amazigh background in a nod to Kenzari's portrayal of Joe. Also, I am a huge fan of their Spy!Yusuf theory and that makes an appearance in the next chapter.
> 
> Also Chapter note: [The Western Schism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism) was the absolute funniest thing I had the privilege of learning about while studying in Rome for a semester. I couldn't help but make a reference to it. Especially when picturing how a 300 year old immortal Catholic would respond to it.


	6. Arabic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. Hello Lovelies. The weather outside is literally crazy with my area having gone from somewhere in the 90's to the 20's and snowing in 24 hours. :( I spent my day off just playing AC:Odyssey and trying to ignore the weather so this is getting posted later than usual.
> 
> Also housekeeping note, the next chapter is going to be delayed until 09/22/20 or 09/29/20! I'm officially out of pre-written chapters (though I have most of the final chapters written) and I'm scheduled for a lot of extra shifts at my work while the (only) other baker is on vaca so I'm going to be... very tired. and unfocused for the next two weeks. And I don't want to try and force the next few chapters just to hit the deadline. So! Wish me well and that the writing gremlins find a holding in my few days off between now and uh, then.

> _**Arabic** —[Arabic] is spoken as an official language in all of the continent's Arab League states. Arabic is also spoken as a trade language across the Sahara as far as the Sahel, including parts of Mali, Chad and Borno State in Nigeria_

She still dreams of drowning, obviously, or her first death. That doesn’t change just because she and Joe have come to an understanding.

Things do change though, slipping into place differently than they had before their talk. Joe is no longer a ghost of a presence, he makes sure to cross paths with Nile at least once a day, even if it’s just to nod and check that she’s doing alright. They’re talking more regularly now as well, though the late night conversations that had marked the start of their friendship transform into early morning conversations as Nile learns more about Joe’s faith and vice-versa.

(”So I probably shouldn’t have started all those conversations with you in the middle of the night, if they were after your nightly prayer?” She had asked, embarrassed once she had made the connection between Joe’s routine of making sure to pray sometime between dinner and midnight and what she now knew about etiquette around those prayers.

Joe had shrugged, “Those rules are in place to discourage someone from staying up late and then lazing about during the day and being complacent about their faith and responsibilities. I’m not personally adherent to following all five salahs nor am I worried about sleeping my days away.”

He had panned the last part and Nile couldn’t help but hum at that, knowing that at this point if she knew anything it was that Joe probably should be sleeping far more than he allowed himself to do so.

“So more like guidelines, than rules.”

“Yes, plus if the conversation is important and resolves conflict or helps to comfort someone it’s important that it happens- wait. You’re quoting at me again.”

“It’s second-nature for my gen, one day you’ll catch up on all the modern cultural references.”

“Excuse me, I’m cultured. It just happens to be several hundred years of culture that’s not happening right now.”)

So they talk more, and Nile shares what it was like living in Chicago, about her dad and her mom, how her brother is a bright kid with the most annoying “judging you silently’ face in existence and is currently pursuing a degree on what the family could get from the VA, and the things she wanted to pursue once her time in the corps was finished. And Joe in turn shares his stories of his family (An older brother and a younger sister who he still misses 900 years after the fact), his memories of Mahdia and growing up with a talent for charming people and keeping a keen eye on his surroundings which lead to him being approached as a young man to take his family’s merchant business east and start trading not just in wares but in the information he could gain on the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo and beyond. He had excelled at it, seeing it as a service to his people when he had grown up on stories of Kairouan and somber explanations of what his family had lost when the Fatimid had Kairouan sacked. He followed that path until the passion for justice as a youth had tempered into a man who was well read, well traveled, and secure in his knowledge that he was following the road Allah had determined for him.

And so when he found himself in Jerusalem in 1099, another city on the cusp of being destroyed by aggressive invaders, he made the decision to stay.

And that’s how he had met Nicolo.

Joe never went into specifics but from what Nile can gather, neither he nor Nicolo liked talking about Jerusalem. He wasn’t particularly forthcoming with the years immediately afterwards or how the two of them ended up traveling together instead of killing each other, but he had a limitless supply of words when it came to talking about Nicolo himself.

Nile realizes very quickly that she had made a significantly misplaced assumption when it came to trying to understand how Joe handled 400 years of separation from Nicolo— everyone else had talked around Nicolo like the man himself would crumble into nothingness if they spoke about him directly. Joe talked about Nicolo like every word was a brick and he was determined to make a palace out of them.

Joe talked about his smile, the way he stumbled over languages with a leaded tongue and a shrug—“Look, you can talk for the both of us and I’ll just stand here and look pretty or menacing as the situation calls for.”—his laugh, which Joe said was indescribable but also an acquired taste. The way he had gravitated towards being adopted by the local grandmother of every town they stayed in for more than a few months and would diligently learn how to cook the area’s signature dish. His skill with a crossbow and later bow, once they had met the other immortals and Quynh had immediately impressed Nicolo with her skills. His even greater skill with a longsword, having learned from several Italian teacher how to wield a two-handed blade to the point where he could have instructed the next generation. The way he would let his hair hang in front of his face and ineffectively blow it away from his eyes over and over and over before giving in and tying it back. His abysmal grasp on politics, and how after his experience with the crusades Nicky had become a champion of helping those in front of him who needed help, he left the big picture implications to Joe. The way written language clicked for him in a way speech never did and how he devoured any literature they could find in as many languages as he could keep up with.

And in this way Nicolo comes alive for Nile through Joe’s stories.

Which makes the knowledge that he’s down there drowning all this while all that much worse, when Nile is conscious. She finds herself mourning for someone she hasn’t met, someone who made such an impression that the love for him and his flaws feels like something that can be shared, not just recounted. At some point she realizes that Joe looks his best when talking about Nicolo and wonders how many chances he’s had to actually talk about Nico since they were separated.

That line of thought gets very depressing the more she thinks about it.

Her dreams though, at least the drowning ones, are slightly impacted by her better understand of who Nicolo is. When they first started Nile was overwhelmed with the feelings of desperation and frustration when it came to drowning and the way Nicolo was screaming around the water in between deaths. Now it feels different. The frustration is still there, but it’s been sharpened into determination. What Nile had mistaken for desperation in Nicolo struggling becomes a different story with the context of a man who values actions far more than words. Each kick and punch at the coffins lid is a resounding reminder that Nicolo is fighting to get out. Even after 400 years. So she dreams and screams along with him in the dreams, mentally willing the coffin to give and finally release it’s prisoner. _Break. Rust. Just fucking break._ She finds herself thinking it throughout the day like a chant, as if she thinks it hard enough the ocean will finally comply to their wishes.

It doesn’t, but it makes Nile feel better to try and direct whatever energy she can towards Nico’s predicament, given that she is still pretty useless to actually finding him.

However, she tries to do better about integrating herself into the crew verses existing as a solo entity who happens to be sharing a boat with everyone. Joe gives her a run down of who’s in the know and Nile makes a point of introducing herself and learning their names. _(Genevieve, Caspian, Maria, Rogerio, Alexander, Renee, Alice, Luka, Sam.)_ She finds out that for a lot of them, this is a family thing and searching for Nico has been a tradition passed down from generation to generation. Which is also insane to think about, but it does explain Joe’s obvious comfort with the crew. She still sticks out like sore thumb compared to the clockwork of the crew and Joe but it’s better than the first week. Maybe by the end of the second run she’ll feel more in step with everything.

That doesn’t stop the joy she feels when she wakes up near Day 26 and finds a text message waiting for her on the burner phone from an unknown number.

_You tired of the ocean yet?_  
_J talking to you or too in the zone to acknowledge you? -B_

Nile laughs.

_J and I are actually getting along real well? We talked through some stuff._  
_How does this phone that still has service this far off shore??_

Booker’s answer is pretty quick after that.

_It’d be a useless emergency phone otherwise._  
_Also, it’s amazing what you can buy when money isn’t an issue._

A few seconds later another text pops up following the last one

_I’m glad to hear you two are getting along, I was a little worried._

_Understandable. But no, it’s going good. I’m not doing much though_  
_You all still in the area?_

_No, different continent now. Q wanted to go by home for a bit and we ‘stumbled’ onto a job from there._  
_You should pick up a hobby, you got time for it._  
_Showtime’s coming up- ttyl. Stay safe._

Nile smiles, tucking the phone into her pocket and going about the day with a bit more of a jump in her step than usual. Though Booker’s comments do make her realize that she never really looked around and asked Joe how the hell he was paying for all this. But if you live for several lifetimes it makes sense that maybe money stops being a thing you worry about after a while.

Joe notices her mood when he catches her on deck in the afternoon. “Good day?”

“Booker texted me this morning to check in, it was nice hearing from him.”

Joe doesn’t hide his surprise. “The phone he gave you has service here?”

“Yeah apparently? He said something about the wonders of technology and money. Which. Actually got me thinking. You spend a lot of money on all this right, that’s not an issue here?”

“No, it’s not.” Joe drawls out the _no_ and is giving her a critical look, “Why?”

“So I’ve been thinking. You know how universities and research institutions dealing with shipwrecks or marine biology and stuff are also out here using ROVs? I don’t know what you’d have to pay but maybe you could set something up to get all the research footage for anything within the area you marked out for where Nico could be and then have someone review all the footage to see if maybe someone else has found him already and just didn’t know it.”

The expression on Joe’s face makes Nile realize that no, he has definitely not thought of this before.

Joe laughs, pushing away from the railing and suddenly in motion, pacing across the deck. “Mashallah, Nile, you are a genius. If we don’t find him this route, I can start making calls once we get within range of land and start figuring out who to contact—” he laughs again and runs his hands through his hair and lacing his finger behind his head and leaning back into the motion, “We’ll need a list of possible institutions and research organizations, narrow it down to the ones with ROVs or partnerships, compare those trips to our map. Figure out who to contact and then what they would want in exchange for the video—and then watch however much video that is to see if there’s any indication of Nicolo. _Santa Maria, madre di dio_ , this is going to be an endeavor.”

Nile grins because this, this she knows how to do. “It’s a good thing you have someone on board with experience narrowing down college apps by major, SAT score, local cost of living, and then tracking down relevant scholarships, financial aid contacts, and playing phone tag through institutional bureaucracy.”

Joe laughs again, his smile wide across his face. “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about but I’m assuming it mean you get this.”

“Yeah, this I know how to do.” She replies with a smile and something warm settles in her chest. “I think we just found out how I’m going to contribute to searching.”

Joe is still just grinning wildly, “How did you even come up with this?”

“I grew up watching Animal Planet and The Discovery Channel.” Nile laughs, “They loooooved showing shipwreck documentaries as a treasure hunting publicity gimmick for years, and I was super onboard with that when I was 12.” 

“Alright well, I take back all my doubts about bringing the new girl with me to look for Nicolo. You just gave me a new method of potentially finding him that I didn’t even know about.” Joe’s now mostly talking to himself, “Someone might have already found him.”

“If that’s the case this will turn into the rescue part of search-and-rescue real fast.”

\--

In the next 6 hours, they’ve got Nile set up with a laptop linked to the ships wifi box and a draft list of institutions to start crosschecking against Joe’s defined zones of where Nicolo could be based on the captain’s log from that journey. Nile’s interrupted by a knock on the door of the map room to find Maria, one of the crew members in-the-know, standing there waiting. “Boss says you thought of another filter for finding Nicolo and I’m being reassigned to help as you see fit. What’s the game plan, mini-boss?”

Nile grins, thinking how it could be Dizzy or Jay standing there instead, waiting for orders on their next mission.

This? Yeah, this she knows how to do.

“Alright so here are the parameters-”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note for this chapter that I forgot before: All credit and understanding of the Spy!Yusuf theory comes from the wonderful meta by lgbtmazight on tumblr, the post which can be found [here](https://anosrepasi.tumblr.com/post/630535643730165760/why-was-i-put-on-this-earth-just-to-suffer-every). They have a ton of fantastic meta on TOG in general and I strongly recommend following if you're active on tumblr.
> 
> Grazie mille per tutti kudos e i commenti! But seriously, thank you all so much they brighten my day immensely. If you can leave more, know you're making a tired writer all that more happy. If you want to fan out with me on Tumblr, that is also a great place to reach me and I love talking with people, even over anon.
> 
> This week's recommendations are some of my favorite Booker-centric works: first up is Quecksilver_Eyes's [Transparency](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26239291?view_adult=true) which is so so so good and I adore anything playing with Booker's backstory as a counterfeiter as a thematic arc but yeah. highly recommend. The second rec is TearsThisSideofHeaven's series [Rolling in the Deep](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1879405) which in a sentence is about Booker's 100 years of exile. And is so much more than that.


	7. [dialect]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. The last few weeks (3 weeks?) have been an experience- one that can mostly be summed up by saying 14 work days and a funeral. Which as a song/album name would be a great name but is less fun as something to go through and mark time with. Needless to say, I didn't have a lot of writing time or general free time the last three weeks and I just want to give a quick shout out to all the people who were waiting patiently for an update, I cannot stress how nice it was to be able to not have to worry about the fic for a while while dealing with everything else or being reminded about it and feel like I needed to rearrange priorities when I just did not have the time for that. 
> 
> We should be back on track now with the fic schedule, I ended up writing myself into a corner and realizing I needed a scene in before the next planned chapter and the tone of said scene didn't fit right with the next chapter so it became it's own chapter and here we all are with a little mini interlude that sets up a few things for me the author but did not roll correctly tagged onto the next chapter. Which also means I am once again a chapter ahead of my fic schedule so yay!
> 
> Also, totally forgot about this last chapter, but if you like fic playlists I distilled my giant fic playlist down into a Kaysanova playlist for this fic and you can find the (slightly outdated) [track list and cover](https://anosrepasi.tumblr.com/post/628171435707400192/anosrepasi-400-years-underabove-the-waves-a) on my Tumblr which has a link to the spotify playlist. I suggest listening in order but on shuffle it's pretty good too.

Booker is waiting for them at the docks once their current route has finished and they’ve returned to dry land.

Neither Nile nor Joe had told him where they’d be docking or when.

“Sebastien, this is a surprise.” Joe leads, eyebrows furrowed as they get within speaking distance of Booker, who’s leaning against an old motorcycle and smiling slightly behind his sunglasses.

“It wasn’t exactly hard, your ship travel manifests are very orderly Mr. _Joseph Jones_.”

Joe levels Booker with a very unimpressed look that morphs into one of exasperation at Nile’s expression and following comment. “You’re joking.”

“What? It’s a perfectly fine name.”

Nile snorts, shaking her head. “Joe, that’s the most suspicious name I’ve ever heard. That is a terrible alias.”

Joe rolls his eyes and looks back at Booker, “This is your fault.”

“Count it at getting even for you showing up unannounced at Charlie.” Booker replies easily. “It’s good to see you two though. There’s a Lebanese place down the road I figured we could eat at if you two had time.”

Honestly, they do have time. They had planned on shore leave for everyone for the next three days with Nile and Joe staying on the ship and figuring out the next round of universities to contact in their search for Nico along with the next few search routes. While they had only planned on going into town for a short supply run once they docked, getting a good lunch in wouldn’t be too much of a detour.

Nile proceeds to give Joe a look of obvious enthusiasm until the man buckles and his expression of reluctance morphs into one of tired acceptance. “Fine. We still have to get a car though.”

Booker nods, straightening up and walking the motorcycle away from the wall he had it leaning against. “Place is called Walima, it off of-” He stops when he notices Joe nodding, “Ok, you know where it is, cool. I’ll see you two there then… unless-”

Booker grins.

“Hey Nile, wanna go for a ride?”

Nile shrugs but hesitates, looking over the bike. “You got an extra helmet?”

Booker just tosses her his helmet, “Nope. But I’ve survived a bad crash before and I’ll probably do it again.”

Nile glances at Joe and he just knocks into her shoulder a bit from where they’re standing. “Go be young and reckless, azizti. I can manage getting a car alone.”

Well, she doesn’t need more encouragement than that. Nile hops onto the motorcycle behind Booker, clipping the helmet into place and giving a small wave to Joe as Booker kicks the bike to life. Joe gives a quick wave back, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Try not to die.”

Booker responds quickly, “No promises.”

And that’s all the warning Nile has before they’re accelerating forward and she’s clutching onto Booker for dear life. 

They speed up quickly, twisting through the streets and weaving through traffic with the same reckless abandon as someone who thinks they’re invincible. Which. To an extent. Nile lets out a trail of terrified giggles as they snake past a car that pulled out in front of them. Booker doesn’t spare her a glance but calls out over the wind and the noise of traffic, “Doing ok or should I tone it down?”

Nile’s still laughing, “Just don’t crash.”

“Noted.”

Sooner than Nile expects, Booker’s slowing the motorcycle down to a complete stop outside a small store front. Booker sends her inside to get a table while he parks and joins her a spot near the windows looking back out at the street, and takes back his helmet as she passes it over to him from across the table.

“So why did you track us down?”

“Had some PTO I needed to use up before the end of the year.”

Nile laughs, her sip of water turning into a cough a moment later. Booker looks slightly guilty but more amused than anything. “Don’t choke, it’s actually not a fun way to go.”

Nile clears her throat and flips him off, “You are an incredibly evasive person.”

“It’s part of my charm.”

Joe chooses that moment to appear, sitting down at the table as if he had been there the whole time and not just caught up with the two of them. The waiter steps in then to get all their orders and is out of earshot again in a flash. Joe raises an eyebrow, “enlightening conversation?”

“Booker’s being secretive about why he’s in town.” Nile answers and Booker gives her one look of betrayal before straightening up, waving a finger lazily up towards the ceiling. “Fine, honest answer is Quynh and Andy took a job up north and I wanted to sit that one out.”

Joe’s expression flattens out, “Russia?”

“Yep.” Booker responds, leaning back. There’s a moment of silence before Booker speaks again after a beat, “Anyway. How’s searching for Nicolo going?”

That’s apparently enough encouragement for Joe to start the conversation anew. “Nile figured out a new method for finding Nicolo.”

Nile rolls her eyes but is content to let Joe brag on her behalf, especially as Booker actually seems interested in the technical aspects of using the ROV footage along with Joe’s work of using the on-ship ROV following specific potential search zones during routes. Booker chimes in with a small, “Great job, kid.” At the end of Joe’s explanation and Nile shrugs, digging into the rakakat she ordered. The conversation comes along easy enough at that point between all of them, with Joe asking how the other immortals have been faring lately and Booker answering in turn about their latest jobs they’ve taken that can be discussed in public with some discretion. 

When their bill is dropped off, Nile volunteers to go get it settled while Booker and Joe keep chatting. She lingers at the counter, talking with the guy ringing up their bill and taking a moment to glance back and confirm that yep, they haven’t lapsed back into an awkward silence yet. She totally called that one.

When she gets back to the table they’re discussing cell phones, of all things.

“Ah, but have you actually gotten Andromache to use one on a regular basis?” Joe counters whatever point Booker just made. Booker leans forward, “No, but I got Quynh to use hers regularly and if I’ve converted Quynh to my side, Andy won’t stand a chance in the long run. This is about the long game, Joe.”

Joe waves a hand up in the air dismissively, “Fair. The fastest way to getting Andromache to innovate is through Quynh. That never changes.”

Nile smiles and the questions she asks next has become routine for the two of them, “Who’s the innovator: You or Nico?”

Booker stiffens across the table and Nile shoots hims a reassuring smile as Joe lets out a small laugh. “Neither of us are as bad as Andromache. Hmm. Depends on the scope. I seek out innovation in topics I’m interested in while Nico is the first to volunteer to try something new, no matter the topic. I guess Nicolo would be the innovator out of the two of us, in most cases.”

“So… would total text with emojis.”

“Yes. Definitely. He’s going to find them endearing.”

Booker watches the exchange with obvious apprehension, only relaxing into a quiet contemplation as Nile and Joe’s banter goes back and forth. Eventually the trio makes their way outside and Joe motions towards the street. “I had to park a few blocks away, Nile, I can grab the car and pick you up here.”

“You sure?”

He makes eye contact with Booker and then nods at Nile. “Yep. Sebastien it was good seeing you, feel free to drop the phone off anytime in the next two days at the ship.”

“Likewise, safe travels if I don’t run into you again before you all head out.”

With that Joe waves and starts walking down the street while Booker shoves his hands into his pockets and leans back. Nile raises an eyebrow, “Not also heading out?”

“Nah, I figured I’d wait with you. What’s a few minutes of my time.”

“Fair enough.”

They stand in relative silence on the curb until Booker speaks up again. “You know, Nile. I think you made the right call in France.”

“Regarding…?”

“Going with Joe. Helping look for Nicolo.”

Nile shrugs, “Eh. I mean I haven’t been much help until recently and that's a team effort with Maria.”

Booker scoffs, “First of all, I just listened to a 900-year-old immortal gush about how you came up with a search method like a very proud parent would for a child’s art project-”

Nile’s face is not heating up. She’s absolutely not averting her eyes at that description.

“Second- I have never heard Joe laugh before. Ever. I’ve now known him for nearly 150 years. Not that we ever socialize, but I have never dreamed of him laughing or even smiling as much as he has today in all the time I’ve known him.”

“He’s actually kinda just like that, normally. He’s super friendly with his crew too.”

Booker gives her a flat look. “You’re a very evasive person.”

Fine. She’ll let Booker have his commentary. Nile clicks her jaw closed and motions for Booker to continue with a sweeping arm. He laughs softly and speaks up once again.

“Final point, and I’ll stop. You’ve been on that ship for three months at most and I’m just trying to drive it home that from my perspective, it’s made a difference. So thank you, for being the one out of all of us who’s helping.”

Nile adverts her eyes, “You’re welcome.”

The silence following feels like an eternity and Nile can’t help but feel a little weight off her shoulders when she sees a car turn the corner with Joe behind the wheel. Booker shifts beside her, “See you in ten years?”

Nile laughs and the tension from before bleeds away completely, “Somehow I get the feeling you’re going to be wrong about that prediction too.”

Booker smiles easily, “Good thing I didn’t bet on it.”

Joe comes to a stop before them and Nile gives a waves as she gets into the car, mirrored by Booker as he starts walking to where he left his motorcycle.

The rest of the day passes easily, going shopping with Joe reminds her a lot of going with her brother, pointing out impractical options and talking about inane topics as they get through their lists of things to get and errands to run. It’s only later, when Nile’s settled down with a book and Joe’s charting out the next couple of potential search routes that Nile’s brain snags onto something Booker had said earlier.

She looks up suddenly, and Joe looks up a moment later, giving her a questioning looks as she thinks through the words.

“Has it really been three months since I got here?”

Joe’s eyebrows furrow momentarily before smoothing, “Yep, minus a few days, I believe.”

“It doesn’t feel like three months.”

“Unfortunate side effect of being out on the water long enough, you start losing track of time unless you make a conscious effort to keep track of it. You alright?”

“Yeah.” Nile concludes, pulling a quick face and Joe laughs softly before turning his attention back to the map he’s hovering over, “I guess I just need to process it.”

Three whole months from when Andy had grabbed her off the base in Afghanistan having her life flipped upside down with no guide rails.

And yet that fact also feels so small.

Well.

Damn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and Kudos feed the soul and helped this author survive 14 days of ten hour shifts over a 16 period of time so anything you have to give I'll take and treasure like a dragon.
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [@Anosrepasi](https://anosrepasi.tumblr.com/) where I'm currently hyperfixiating on the old guard and occasional politics posts. More often than not though you get me writing tag novels about my writing process and asking the characters "sooooo you just went off script, where we going with this?"
> 
> Ooof. So many good fic recs over the past few weeks, I've got three this time:  
> First up is Survivah's [Three Immortals and a Puppy Walk Into a Bar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25854685) which has the canon compliant aftermath of the movie where Joe, Nicky and Nile spend some time together directly after the scene at Copley's and awkwardness ensues with them being the immortals who have so far spent the absolute least amount of time together by canon standards. It's so good, both as a comedy and a tear jerker.
> 
> Second is ARandomFactoid's [Present Company (The Best That You Can Find)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25889578/chapters/62912365) which is a wonderful fic exploring the minute of how exactly did they all end up at the bar and later copleys house no longer covered in blood. It's an in depth fantastic look into these characters immediately after the action of the movie and filling in so much detail that really adds a lot to the movie in my opinion.
> 
> Third is Draco_sollicitus's [let not time deceive you (you cannot conquer time)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26036764/chapters/63315856) WHICH not that you would guess it based on the first half of the first chapter which is a shock in itself... anyway. an au with grad student Nico and professor in another department!Joe and its so fucking good. I cannot explain how good this fic is and how creative it is and yet, the characters. the characterization and writing is so good. I laughed and cried in equal measure multiple times reading this fic and it really is a beautiful piece of work. It also validated me that if Nile chose a alias she'd go by "River" so great minds think alike I guess.


	8. Italian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello Lovelies. We're back for another week and I hope you enjoy this chapter, I went back and forth on it for a bit. 
> 
> Life unfortunately has thrown a bit more my way after letting my schedule up again so I'm going to postpone the next chapter until 10/20/20 and if y'all are lucky it'll get posted on the 19th as a birthday present to myself. I do want to reiterate that if I'm going to delay a chapter I will let y'all known in the author comment and while i appreciate the excitement people have for this fic comments with "I hope this fic is still active" or asking when it'll next get updates when I put a date are less than encouraging and if you could refrain from them that would be a kindness. Just an fyi. I have all intentions of finishing this fic and sometimes I just need an extra week between chapters so I do it right.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy, and also warning for depictions of drowning in this chapter at the very beginning.
> 
> Also, I do not speak Zeneize. I tried my best to work with what I had via an online dictionary and a grasp of romance language grammar. The result is most certainly incorrect. Please have mercy and know there are no further plans to be putting in untranslated zeneize in the future but I kinda needed it for plot reasons.

> _**Italian** —In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and the fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy._

Nicolo isn’t moving.

Nile knows he must still be alive, he has to be, because she is dreaming right now but the shock of it nearly kicks her back into consciousness. The cold and the pain though are still here—he is still drowning. He’s just, not moving. Not trying to get out of the shackles he’s in or kick against the lid of the iron maiden. He’s just floating and drowning and coming back and drowning again.

No.

No, he’s not just drowning. Nile can see, no feel, his mouth opening. Wide open on one vowel than closed with his teeth pressed close, wide again, sucking in far more water this word and biting down on the next syllable, lips ending flat like a grimace, each movement backed with intent. He’s cut the amount of time between drownings in half this way, easily from 30 seconds to a mere 10 or 15.

 _Ve—tr—_ pause _—ve—d—i—_ pause—drown _—v—tri—_ pause _—ved—di—_ drown _-vede—yu—f—_ drown _—yus—f—ved—i—yu—uf—_

Nile wakes up already pulling the sheets away from her and stumbling to the door, crashing through the halls until shes pushing the door to the map room open without caring how it bangs against the wall. Joe scrambles away from where he’s sitting at the table, a handgun drawn and pointed past her shoulder as she stumbles into the room, colliding into the table to stop herself, “Nile?!”

“He’s trying to talk to you, Joe.”

Joe’s setting the handgun aside, realizing that there’s not a threat chasing after Nile and strides to catch her arm as she straightens up, “Nile, what are you talking about?”

“He’s saying your name, he’s trying to tell you something and he’s drowning himself faster to do it.”

“Nicolo?” It’s a whisper and Nile is nodding, pulling in a ragged breath before she continues. “He’s saying two words, I think, both start with a soft consonant like v or b. First one ends with a “tr/tri” sound. Second word is something like “ved-dee,” maybe with another syllable in there that I couldn’t hear.”

Joe is mouthing along, his brow furrowed as he cycles through possible sounds and words, when he pales, hand shooting out to grab the table for support. _“viâtri veddi.”_

He moves to slump onto the table, sitting on the edge and leaning his head back as he exhales. Nile pulls out a chair and collapses into it, suddenly boneless after her rush to find Joe and talk to him before the dream faded and the details got muddy. She’s aware now of just how tired she still is. They sit in silence for a moment and Joe doubles over, holding his face in his hands and dragging them from forehead to chin. “He saying ‘I see you.’ Us, plural. He sees us.”

“So he’s dreaming about me, the same way I am about him.”

Joe just nods listless.

Then he laughs, high and painful and a mockery of his usual laugh. He places his hands neat to him as he does so and his right hand bumps into a glass left on the table, causing it to clumsily rock against the surface as it tries to right itself. Joe doesn’t give it the time to do so, his hand snaps out and knocks the glass away from him and shattering it effortlessly against the floor. He makes no indication that he heard or cares about Niles sharp exclamation at the action. He just stares at a the spot there on the wall before bringing his hands back to cover his face again, shoulders twitching for a moment. 

“What fucking good is it for him to see me if I haven’t found him yet.” His voice breaks on the last few words.

Nile swallows, wanting to reach out and also very much not do that simultaneously, unsure how Joe would respond to physical touch right now. She also leans forward resting her elbows on her knees and fiddles with her necklace.

“He wasn’t moving, when the dream started.”

Joe’s head turns like a whip cracking and Nile can see the tears on his cheeks catching the light as he moves. She swallows and continues.

“I thought- I thought he was dead-dead for a second and nearly woke up. He wasn’t- he was just, actively choosing not to move, not trying and break out of the coffin like he usually is. All he was doing was using the time in between drowning to try and talk at us, even though it meant he was drowning faster since he was practically inhaling the water. I don’t know how long he’s been choosing to do this, maybe he’s been trying to get a message to you for a long time and I just didn’t notice over the obvious parts of the dream I was used to seeing.”

Nile exhales and sets her shoulders, looking Joe in the eye. “From where I’m standing, if he’s going to that length to tell you he can see you looking for him, it matters or at least it matters a whole hell of a lot to him.”

Joe just looks at her for a long time, before muttering something under his breath and then nodding, “You’re right.”

“So what‘s the plan?”

“I don’t—” Joe waves a hand around for a moment before it settles, “I don’t know. I don’t want him drowning himself faster to communicate with me.”

“Alright.” Nile says, leaning back in her chair and chewing on a corner of her lip, “So how do we tell him that? I don’t know if he can hear things better than I can when he dreams, since I’m not underwater, but maybe I just start chanting “we’re looking for you” to myself until it becomes clear he knows that we know we heard him?”

Joe’s sitting up straight now, wiping the tears away and furrowing his brows. “He won’t understand you, we weren’t exactly speaking Modern English when we were separated.”

“So, Italian then.”

Joe shakes his head, “No, he doesn’t have time to translate between deaths and Modern Italian is Florentine. He’s speaking in Zeneize, we’ll answer in Zeneize.”

He then proceeds to say a string of sentences that Nile does not follow whatsoever.

She looks at him and blinks.

“You’re going to have to break that down for me, Joe.”

He gives a wet laugh and shakes his head. ”Tomorrow. I need to clean this up and figure out how this changes things and you look like you’re about to fall asleep on me.”

“But-”

“Nile, I can’t burn you out on this, I can’t push you the way I push myself. I’ll give you one phrase and then you need to sleep and we can figure out the rest tomorrow.”

She pouts at him and Joe sighs, “I’m not budging on this. One phrase.”

He says only a couple words this time, slow enough for Nile to repeat them back at him and have him nod in satisfaction. She ends up repeating it under her breathe until she’s back to her bunk and ready to pass out again, saying it a few more times as her eyes close before sleep washes over her completely.

 _“We’re looking for you”_

—

The next morning Nile finds Joe on deck right after dawn, finishing up his prayers. She waits quietly until after he’s put his prayer rug away and reemerged on deck to join her at the railing. “Adding in another prayer?”

Joe hums quietly, “Sometimes we’re a bit more lost than usual and that helps to get me back on track. Last night… gave me a lot to think about.”

He turns slightly, so he can make eye contact with Nile while they stand side by side. “Thank you. For both telling me and being blunt enough to make me realize I was so focused on my reaction I wasn’t getting it. And I’m sorry for my outburst, that will not happen again.”

“Thank you for the apology.” Nile replies, “In retrospect I do have to say that that was the most uncomfortable interaction I’ve had with you since we met, and that’s taking into account you tripped me outside the church and nearly spooked me into falling off a roof on day one.”

“I deserve that.” Joe concedes, “And you deserve better. Though can I just say I’m proud of you for not immediately blowing off my apology like you did that first time?”

“I think we’re both learning.” Nile bumps their shoulders together. “You know how I’ve got all these stories about my brother? Helping him through applying for colleges, making sure to spend time with him when I’m in Chicago?”

“Yes?”

“So when we were kids we were awful to each other. I’m talking full on fist fights and trying to claw the other one’s eyes out over stupid shit. A couple years after our dad died we figured it out that honestly, we had our mom and each other, and that was it. No one else was going to advocate for us, and we could either help each other out or keep trying to tear each other down just because we were both individually hurting. Looking back on it, I think part of the reason we were both so awful as kids was because we didn’t know how to deal with the fact that dad was always gone and mom was stressed, which only got worse when dad died. So we took it out on each other, cause that’s what people do when they’re in pain and don’t think anyone is listening.”

Joe listens quietly and exhales slowly when Nile finishes speaking.

“Nile. You’ve got to stop acting like the old one out of the two of us, it’s very unbecoming of someone my age to be humbled by a 26 year old on a regular basis.”

“Do better next time.” Nile says parroting Joe’s words from one of their early conversations back at him and Joe levels her with an unimpressed look but then adverts his eyes and exhales a small “right.” They stand at the railing in silence for a moment before Joe breaks it.

“So. He’s ‘dreaming’ about you, the same way you are for him.”

“Apparently.”

“How are you feeling about this?”

Nile turns, confusion obvious as Joe asks the question. “Why are you asking me how _I_ feel?”

“Because you’re the one dreaming about him, Nile. If the experience is comparable to our dreams, he’s getting impressions of your feelings and the world around you—And that’s a lot more personal than working under the impression he wasn’t seeing any of this. So given I can’t do much other than continue looking for him I want to make sure you’re alright as well?”

Nile turns that over for a while, taking stock of the implications.

“I’m glad I asked you to let me come with.” She says eventually, “For both me and Nico. I’m in a better place to tackle immortality when I’m with someone who lets me talk through it and process it, which I couldn’t really do in France with the rest of the group. I’m sure Booker in the long run would have helped me feel a lot more at home there but it would have been lonely for a long time. And I can’t even imagine… I’m guessing just seeing you probably feels like a lifeline for Nicolo.”

“We haven’t found him yet though.”

“But he knows someone’s out here looking for him, that you specifically are still looking for him.” Nile replies, frowning. “He’s going through literal hell and I’m sure knowing that we’re not just going to leave him there makes a world of difference or at least that’s how I’d feel.”

Joe sits on that the way she had on his question from earlier.

After a while he speaks, hesitantly. “When you first got came aboard I was expecting you to stick with me for a route or two, at most, before you figured out what you were going to do and then I’d be handing you off back to the group or wishing you well if you decided to go home. Instead you’ve stayed and you’re saying “we” are going to find Nicolo. I just- Nile, you’re not obligated to be here, and I get the feeling where ever we take this conversation is going to determine what happens next for you in a way that’s going to stick.”

“You’re trying to give me an out again.”

“I have been looking for Nico for so long, and I know this isn’t a life, Nile. My stories have more spark in them than I do some days. I’m worried you’re going to want to stay, especially knowing Nico can see you, and the time you thought you had will slip away from you before you notice. I can’t-” He pauses. “I can’t have you wake up one day and realize you gave all the time you should have had with your family to helping me and regret it. I can’t keep losing people because of this. I lost Nico, I don’t recognize Andromache and Quynh anymore and I don’t think they recognize me. I didn’t even bother with Sebastien. Nile, if you look back one day and regret staying, if this takes another 100 years and it’s taken too long, it’s going to hurt and I don’t think either of us will be able to recover from it.”

Acknowledging that hurts a lot more than Nile thought it would.

Because he’s right. They might be looking for another few centuries and she’s got a decade at most if she goes home, she might have had the last couple of months to try and come up with a solution but she’s not there yet. And yeah, maybe she does feel obligated, knowing that Nicolo’s been as much of a background observer to her life in the past two months as she’s been to his life. But she doesn’t just feel obligated to Nicolo.

She leans onto Joe’s arm and he shifts and pulls her into a half-hug in response. She thinks of her mom, of her brother, of her dad, and how goodbyes aren’t made equal. She’s going to lose them all, in the end. She might have already lost them, depending on what the Marines have said or have not said in her absence. If she leaves though, she’s going to lose something else too.

“You’d be doing this on your own again.”

“Azizti, I’ve been alone for a long time. I’ll survive it, like usual.”

She also knows herself though, and she can’t help but think of Joe talking about avoiding Booker after all those years of watching him. She knows if she leaves, she won’t be able to step back on this boat again in a decade, able to pick everything back up again. She’ll be thinking of all the years she spent surrounded by her family, knowing Nicolo is still in his box watching her, and Joe searching for him just out of the camera frame.

She thinks of Robert Montgomery and _the people you love become ghosts inside of you and like this you keep them alive._

She thinks of Frank Ocean and _I let go of my claim on you._

She realizes she has her answer.

“No.”

“Nile-”

“No. Fuck that. I didn’t ask for this and Nico didn’t ask to get dropped in a coffin. You didn’t ask to spend 400 years on your own feeling like you didn’t have a family anymore. I can’t just walk off and say “well It’s not my problem for a while.” There has to be a why in all of this— why us, why now, and I am not accepting any answer saying that God just set us up to suffer. Fuck that. I’m staying until we find him, because if there’s a reason for why this all happened it’s got to be that we’re going to find him. And until then we’re doing this together.”

She pushes away from the railing and ducks out from under Joe’s arm, not knowing what she’s doing exactly other than the fact that she can’t just stand there with her hands shaking after saying all that.

Joe waits and Nile paces the deck, her hand toying with her necklace. 

She pauses mid step and huffs, Joe still hasn’t moved from the railing. “You believe this too right? That this has to work out in the end.”

Joe’s shoulder’s sink and his voice carries softly from where he’s standing. “I’ve only been certain that I will find him. I never-”

He cuts off and starts again. “I don’t know how it ends. I can hope it ends up happy, but that doesn’t mean it’ll happen that way.”

Nile looks up at the sky, breathing in the salty air and crossing her arms against the slight breeze. She takes a deep breathe and looks back towards Joe, who’s turned and is now looking at her with an unreadable expression.

“For what it’s worth,” Nile starts slowly, “I think this is going to end happy.”

Joe’s ghost of a smile makes a reappearance, tired and small, but there none the less.

“It’s good to be keeping company with an optimist.”

Nile smiles, as grim as the gesture feels in this moment. Later she’ll figure out the consequences of sticking to this. Later she’ll make the plans to save every photo of her family she has and track down the few and far between voice mail messages of her mom’s and brother’s voices and convert them to mp3’s to be saved. Later she’ll grieve, but she makes herself promise now not to regret it.

“Yeah it is. So how do I say “We’re going to find you” in Zeneize?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by a slightly teary eyed author and Zoe Keating's _Optimist_.
> 
> Comment/Kudos always appreciated, and always feel free to pop in and chat with me on tumblr or see my extra story content there.
> 
> Also not quite sure how to say this but want to preemptively address it: grief/survivors guilt/several hundred years of trauma would probably make it so a person has some pretty bad lows and reactions that could come of as angry/violent and should not define said character. I tried to make sure I wasn't contributing to the Joe is violent discourse from tumblr because its hella racist while also being able to acknowledge that in this au, he's really not alright, understandably, and yeah occasionally that comes out and this stuff is complicated and occasionally you spiral into less than great behavior. 
> 
> On that note, here are some recs about immortality and people/feelings being complicated:  
> first, [Crawl Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26790184/chapters/65353639) by Deanniker. I usually try and avoid reading similar AU's when I'm writing one but this one caught my attention and it was different enough that I cheated and read it. It's very good. It also really good about addressing very complicated feelings around the iron maiden au and feelings of abandonment and trauma.  
> second, [heimweh.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26634775?view_adult=true) by Quecksilver_Eyes. This one is Nile!centric and honestly I should probably have a lot more Nile focus recs for these lists. But yeah, the summary does a great job and explores the premise of sometimes its the small things that break you not the big things.  
> third, [Tarjamāt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25696240/chapters/62390470) by febricant. Oof. This one only has 1 chapter out of 5 as of right now but that one chapter goes hard and if you want "being immortal and alive for decades is very complicated and gets weird" here's your fic. I hope that OP one day continues it because yeah it cuts no corners.


	9. Russian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! It's my birthday today (for like 47 more minutes) and following in my yearly tradition, here's a chapter update :)
> 
> I don't think I have any preliminary notes on the chapter other than that? Enjoy!!

> _**Russian** —Russian is in use and widely understood in Central Asia and the Caucasus, areas formerly part of the Soviet Union or bloc, and in much of Central and Eastern Europe, formerly part of the Warsaw Pact. It remains the official language of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russian is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations._

_Could I ask for a favor? -N_

_Such as? -B_

_Would there be a way to find out if the Marines have_  
_notified my family and what they've said?_

_Yeah. I could figure something out._  
_Give me a few weeks._

_Thank you._

_No problem, kid._

—

_Route 4_

Nile becomes a translator, or more accurately a transcriber. She knows now to focus on what Nico is trying to say—holds onto the words she can remember upon waking and then works with Joe to learn the response. 

It's slow, tedious and frustrating-but it's a conversation. 

A conversation between two people who haven't spoken in 400 years. 

_We're looking for you. We're going to find you._

_I know, I know you will._

Nile spends a full day on the map room— focusing on scanning the different charts annotated with all the possible places Joe thinks they should search. They know how long the ship that took Nicolo was at sea for, and by the luck of having a captain who took meticulous notes, they know how many days out it was before they threw Nico overboard. Heading was never stated, probably under command of the church back then, but it’s given Joe enough info to work out a rough area of where Nico might be located. 

Nile scans over each chart asking her question out loud until she could recite the landmark on each map from memory alone.

_Do you know where you are? Any idea on direction? Any information that could help?_

_I don’t remember._

_It’s deep here, there is no light._

_I don’t know anything else._

She had hoped there was something they could use, instead she watches as Joe flexes his hands and mummers to himself after they translate the responses after a few nights. Joe stills and his voice is rough and quiet.

“I used to snap at him, when we uh, we were on less than friendly terms, that he could do to spend more time in the sun, that his skin seemed to me so pale that it could only have happened if he’d been shut away in the dark for too long and merely dragged out when it was time to invade another person’s homeland.”

Joe laughs for a moment, brokenly.

“It’s amazing in what new ways you can regret your words, centuries later.”

—

_I need to ask you something._  
_Have your dreams changed at all lately?_

_Yes_  
_We should probably have this conversation in person_  
_Are you going to be around anytime in the future_

_I’ll be there the next time you all dock._

—

_Route 6_

Booker learns about Nico and their efforts to communicate with his jaw set tight and a very pointed “You two need anything, you call.”

He also claps Nile on the shoulder and hands her a few sheets of paper when he’s leaving, stopping her for a moment. “This is what I’ve got so far. I’ll keep you updated if I hear more.”

The Marines have marked her down as MIA with a lukewarm investigation occurring at the moment that looks like it'll only cement that ruling. It’s better than being declared AWOL or deserted but it's not much.

They haven't notified her family yet. Nile wonders how long that'll take.

She spends her time when she’s not working with Maria to sit on deck of the ship, sucking up as much sun as she can stand while knowing in the next months it’s only going to get colder. She’s been wonderingly lately how much of the sensory snapshots of her life make it to Nicolo. She knows he can hear what they’re saying, or enough of it to respond in a way that makes sense. She knows she can taste the mix of iron and salt that’s ever present in her dreams, but that might be because it’s so prevalent. She wonders if he gets a taste of the meals she eats, or the phantom sense of warmth from the sun on her skin.

She’s hesitant to ask Joe for a translation, not wanting to waste some of Nico’s words on her curiosity. Instead she slows down, savoring each meal longer than she had before. She surrounds herself with music, especially instrumental pieces that catch her attention. She splurges on her next shore leave and buys a sample pack of scented lotion, ranging from the standard vanilla and lavender to very subjective scents called things like “Forest” or “Shoreline.” She tries a new one every few days, and breathes in deep.

—

_Cara mia, il mio cuore bravo, thank you, thank you, thank you_

—

_Route 10_

Her brother's birthday comes and goes and Nile spends three days wrapped up in blankets in her bunk rotating between awareness and sleep. She's just so _tired_ and can't stop the waterworks if she thinks about the date too much.

Everything aches so she sleeps and she dreams about bright eyes waiting patiently.

On the third, or possibly forth, day that Nile’s spent barely aware Joe slips into the room and quietly sits down next to her bed. She wakes up to find him waiting.

His voice is gentle, "Talk to me?" 

Nile struggles around the words and Joe doesn't rush her, eventually Nile settles on the root of the problem. "It was my brother's birthday a few days ago."

She curls up tighter, trying to push away the lump in her throat, "No matter what, I’ve always made sure to contact him within a day or two of his birthday. One year I knew I’d be out of range for the whole week and sent a card ahead of time."

She sniffs and Joe waits until she's got hold of her voice again. "He's going to be waiting—he's waiting now—and going to be on the lookout for a call or a message that won't be coming—”

Her voice breaks around a sob.

"They're going to start worrying now. They're going to know something is wrong and I'm putting them through this. They didn't get notified when this started and this is how my mom's going to find out—and she's going to find out I've been gone _for months_ and no one bothered to tell her."

Joe lays a hand on her shoulder and Nile jerks at the contact.

"Nile." His voice is level but comforting, like when he had first spoken. "You don't need to be brave right now."

The tears don't wait for the end of his sentence. They sit there for a long while, Joe not moving his hand while Nice sobs until she feels empty of everything. Eventually they're just left with the silence and Nile's stuttered breathing. Joe never makes a motion to leave.

Nile’s voice is rough and only above a whisper, "Does it hurt less, after so many years?" 

"No. Not in the way you're imagining." Joe answers softly, "Love isn't so easily bested by time. Even if you forget the details you'll still feel that love, and you still find yourself aching for those you’ve lost."

He pauses and squeezes Nile’s shoulder gently, “It would be a sad existence, living as long as we do and becoming apathetic to the people around us. We have to feel it, Nile, every time. It’s what keeps us grounded.”

—

_Route 11_

Booker sends them a warning text this time before they dock, asking if they want to catch an early dinner.

The conversation dissolves into an argument about whether or not the Mona Lisa is fake.

Both Booker and Joe are arguing that it is- but under different contexts. Neither one refuses to cede to the other’s argument. For every point raised, the other one jumps in with a witty retort and a counter-argument already formed to explain why “no that’s totally wrong.”

Joe’s leaning on heavily on his expertise of _“Did you ever walk through Leonardo’s studio, Booker? No, no you didn’t. If you did you’d know the one on display is wrong.”_ While Booker’s hitting heavy on the fact that Joe has apparently not been to a museum in several hundred years and as an old man his memory is probably a little suspect for remembering the details of a painting he probably looked at only a few times, plus does he really think the French would allow it to get stolen _that_ easy?

Nile rolls her eyes, calls them both ridiculous and forgets about the grief on her shoulders for an evening.

—

_Route 12_

Some days, Nile just listens as Joe takes in a long dead dialect of a language she has very little grasp on.

They don't know how much Nico can catch between dreams when they don't repeat themselves but some statements aren’t meant to be broken down into translated chunks of words and said through someone else’s mouth.

So Nile listens to the sound of the vowels and consonants wrapping around each other and hopes Nico can hear it too.

—

_Route 13_

Nile knows that Booker must have said something, there’s no other way Joe's timing is this good. Booker texts her the day before shore leave, breaking the news as gently as he could over text. 

_your mom got ahold of someone and has now been informed that you're missing. -B_

She doesn't sleep well that night. When she emerges from her cabin in the early afternoon the next day after finally crying herself into an exhausted sleep, Joe's the only one left on the ship. 

He pushes a piece of paper over to her as she finds something to eat, nonchalant as he does so, "Just in case you want to distract yourself a bit." 

It’s an ad for an upcoming Bernini exhibit at the Victoria and Albert museum. Nile looks up and bless him, Joe is try to look occupied with his phone. "Don't you have stuff to do?" 

"My schedules been cleared for today, Gen tells me I need to take more time off." He says, once again feigning boredom, "There’s an opening for 3pm, if you're interested?" 

"That'd be fun, yeah." Nile says putting away her dishes. "I'd like that a lot." 

\--

They're walking past another hallway when Joe slows on Nile looks to see what caught his attention. She scans the scarlet letters projected on the wall and whistles,

"Caravaggio, nice."

The museum apparently has more than one exhibit on loan and down the hall they paused at is a darkened entrance with **C A R A V A G G I O** projected above a set of doors.

Joe has stopped now and is frowning at the entrance to the exhibit. He tilts his head off to the side a bit before speaking, "Humor an old man, Nile. When they say 'Caravaggio' what’s the first name of the artist?"

"Humor granted." Nile replies, already walking towards the exhibit and pulling Joe along, "But there’s only one Caravaggio- Michelangelo Merisi? I think was his actual name." 

Joe lets himself get pulled forward and makes a humming noise. "We knew him." 

Nile stops.

"What."

"We were in Rome before we went north- he had grown into his notoriety when we left but his studio was interesting enough. Nicolo and I spent several weeks watching him work and talking with his models. Nico was very interested in how dramatic he made his paintings and the biblical stories he used as subjects." 

Nile is gaping, "You were friends with Caravaggio?"

"Not friends, that man did not have friends. Acquaintances, maybe?" 

"Oh. Yep. We're going into this exhibit. You can be my guide!" 

"We left in 1605? So anything after that is unknown by me."

"That’s fine, I pretty much know the story about the memorable pieces made up until 1610."

Joe stops again, "1610? Michelangelo was a prolific painter—did something happen?" 

“Ah.” Nile stops as well and weighs her words for a second. “How good of a mind space are you in right now for bad news?”

Joe's frown is an answer in itself, “Ignoring the information won’t change the fact it happened, and I’m sure it’ll be posted on the wall in the exhibit somewhere.”

“Alright, well the quick version is that he died in 1610. The longer version is that he spent most of his time after getting exiled from Rome in 1606 jumping around from different places getting into fights and looking for ways to get back to Rome, all of which ended up with him dying under mysterious circumstances while hoping to get a pardon from the pope.”

Joe’s frown deepens, “That’s unfortunate.”

“Yeah, not a happy story.” Nile agrees, “Do you want to skip this one?”

“No, we should go in— his technique was fantastic and honestly his story isn’t very surprising, that region seems to be the birthplace of men predestined for saudade.”

He nods toward the doors, though his eye seem to be focusing past the walls to his thoughts beyond, “After you, azizti”

—

The exhibit _is_ fantastic, though. 

Joe is a constant presence behind Nile as they go from painting to painting and with a slight lilt in his voice Joe will often give the supplementary story to the paintings he recognizes- a tale about how two models were fighting but both could only glare daggers at each other while Caravaggio painted, the back and forth conversations picked up by the studio regulars who treated the reunions as if no time had passed at all between meetings, and the sharp wit of Signora Lena.

Occasionally Joe wanders off on his own, reading each information placard they come across and rejoining Nile a painting or two later. It’s only after passing one copy of _Judith Beheading Holofernes_ that Nile makes a comment only to be met by silence and realize Joe has not been at her side for quite a while.

Nile looks back and slows, what she was about to say fades on her tongue. Joe is frozen before one painting on the opposite wall and he looks like he's seen a ghost, wide-eyed and high strung.

"Joe?"

He doesn't respond so Nile crosses the distance to see what's caught him and stops short when she sees the painting.

In truth it’s more a painted sketch than painting, mostly underpainting and lots of gestural lines with blocks of vague figures with only a few spots painted in with Caravaggio's signature tenebrism style. Unlike most paintings in the room this one doesn't have a unifying focal point-while most of the gestural figures are facing towards some loosely outlined figure, the two most well defined figures in the painting are looking at each other-

Oh.

Oh shit.

His hair is longer and his beard shorter, but Nile can recognize Joe when she sees him, smiling and looking back towards another man. Another man with bright blue eyes and a half-smile on his lips, his attention totally focused on the Joe in the painting. 

The Joe in the museum looks about ready to cry.

"Joe." Nile starts off slowly, "You alright?" 

Joe shudders, his hands snapping closed at his sides and he's turning to blink at Nile, his voice raspy, "Yeah, I just didn't expect-I forgot the hanging around a studio occasionally meant you were included in the art."

Nile closes the distance to stand besides Joe, bumping their shoulders together and crossing her arms as she examines the painting.

"So I see that you two are that couple."

Joe lets out a strangled laugh, "What could you possibly mean by that?" 

"You two are obviously the couple that are like visibly head-over-heels with each other; I mean look at this, you wrecked this whole man’s composition through the power of you two not looking away from each other."

Joe's laugh rings out this time and Nile nods to the museum employee who glances over at them. Joe smiles, "You're awful."

"Mmm. And yet you love me anyway." Nile retorts and Joe sighs, "Yes, I suppose that’s true." 

Nile grins but her tone is gentle as she looks back at the painting. "You two look good together though, happy."

Joe nods and lightly pushes Nile's shoulder so they’re walking to the next painting. "We were."

Later, in the museum gift shop, Joe will be flipping through sketchbooks and making faces at the price tags for expensive replications. Nile uses the moment to strike up a conversation with the cashier. "Hey do you all have any prints of the painting numbered 19 from the Caravaggio exhibit?" 

She points at the page for that painting in the exhibit catalog. "Prints, postcards, or other options, honestly." 

The cashier looks at it and nods, "We've got postcards for that one—it's pretty popular for an incomplete piece." 

Joe's still on the other side of the room. Perfect.

"Fantastic, can I get two postcards?"

Nile flips one of the cards on its back while the cashier rings them up and nearly laughs. Above the painting’s original size info, year, and artist credit is the simple name: "Untitled-(’The lovers')"

—

_[Picture attachment sent]_

_is that?_

_Yep._

_Fuuuuck._

—

When Nile finishes reciting what she remembers from her dream she yawns and the immediately furrows her brows when Joe makes a choking noise and flushes a noticeable rosy undertone.

"Joe... what did Nico say." Nile says, though she has a premonition she doesn't want to know. 

"Ah. 'It's a good painting' and then something I'm going to refrain from repeating, especially to you." Joe answers and has the decency to look embarrassed. 

Oh my god, nope.

"Alright, boundaries talk time!" Nile replies, "How do I tell Nico in zeneize that immortal dream magic is not to be used for phone sex under any circumstances. He can save the pillow talk for when I am very much so not involved." 

At this point Joe is laughing into his hands and manages to choke out a response around his giggles, "Nile, I'm so so sorry."

"Yusuf Al-Kaysani, I am waiting for a translation. Ancient zeneize for "leave room for Jesus," please and thank you." 

Joe just laughs harder until he’s crying.

It takes ten minutes for him to calm down enough to give Nile a phrase which she repeats to herself with her best Sargent voice.

"Your husband is shameless." Nile deadpans as Joe wipes away the stray tears, still chuckling.

"He’s very bold. I like that about him." Joe replies fondly. "And I have to say, I love how you phrased all of that so a direct translation would be totally impossible."

“Not my job to make this easy on you.” Nile replies easily, though she’s now smiling as well.

“Fair, fair. Thank you for putting up with us anyway.”

She isn’t going to tell him, but maybe seeing him cry with laughter and the big lovesick grin on his face was worth the momentary embarrassment. Maybe.

—

_My apologies, il mio cuore bravo, I’ll behave._

—  
  
That night Nile dreams of a drowned man laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALRIGHT. Side notes: Are Nicolo's terms of endearment in Italian? yes. I gave up trying to find Zeneize options and like. I've got a beginner's grasp on Italian so i said screw it, my need for affectionate nicknames outweighs the inconsistency. 
> 
> Also I wasn't kidding about hey we're going to explore the weight of Nile's immortality and also the US military is awful.
> 
> Any comments on this chapter double as birthday gifts so like... bless all of you who leave one. Am I squeezing out everything I can get from this otherwise arbitrary date? Oh hell yes I am.
> 
> This chapter's recs are as follows:
> 
> First up- ongreenergrasses's [almost a thing that my heart could endure](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26190706/chapters/63733954). Just. *Distressed noises* I had to look back and check cause I thought i had already recc'ed this but I hadn't and that needed to be fixed. This fic is fantastic. This fic has dialogue that destroys you, world building that enamors you to the characters even more and like. you want emotions? you want conflict and grappling with guilt and repression and one of the best written Nicolo's I've had the pleasure to read? Great. Read this fic. I adore this fic, and the author, who is a joy to talk with.
> 
> Second- TheGoodDoctor's [l'albatros](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25530934). Another Booker focus fic but like, he's still an asshole, and he's still got a lot of repenting to do in response to his betrayal, but he's also told to do community service and gets accosted by an old french grandmother and her grandchild who start's calling Booker a gargoyle. So like. There's tears, but this fic is also just so fucking funny.
> 
> Last but not least- ContreParry's [The Greatest Fiction Podcast On Stitcher (and wherever you listen to podcasts on iPhone, Android, or other devices)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27076831). This one is inspired by that one tumblr post called Joe starts a podcast. This author did that post a great service and this is just, a joy of a one shot and mini-exploration. It's so good.


	10. Greek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a sucker for validation and said screw it, I've got 4 days of work ahead of me might as well get some comments during that time.
> 
> To everyone leaving me comments and the birthday wishes, thank you!! I'm trying to catch up on replying and it's just not happening right now so for the meantime I see you and know that i love you, and i will eventually find time and brain space to comment!
> 
> The final two chapters will be posted probably next week, I realized my current schedule will have me posting past the election and i just... don't want to do that. So I'm trying to get this finished before then. here's your reminder that if you are also in a country having an election in the next two weeks.. please vote. I will see you all next week, potentially not tuesday but with the last parts of this fic nonetheless.

> _**Greek** -During the Middle Ages, the lingua franca was Greek in the parts of Europe, Middle East and Northern Africa where the Byzantine Empire held hegemony._

It happens while they’re on shore leave, halfway through a breakfast that Nile dragged them to go get. To be fair, Nile was craving a stereotypical “American” breakfast and Joe had just rolled his eyes and let her take him to this little touristy breakfast place she had found on google. Their food had just arrived five minutes prior when both Nile and Joe’s cell phones chimed with a text message from Maria.

A text message containing coordinates.

Followed by a text message with a 10 second video attached.

Joe presses play, holding out his phone so they can both see it clearly and at first all they can see and hear is some assumed biologists laughing over a very weird looking octopus. Then the spotlight of the video’s ROV goes over a corner of what looks like a box, trailing up the length of it until it becomes clear it’s not a box but a coffin, chained with one old lock and with a few holes in a grotesquely carved face area. The scientists are still fawning over the octopus.

“Oh.”

They sit there, frozen, staring at the screen and the video ends.

It takes another few seconds before Joe shifts, no longer frozen but snatching his phone back and scrolling through the contacts, speaking the moment the person on the line answers. “Gen. How many people do we have on board? Is it enough to set out right now?”

Nile just slumps into her chair, staring at the table in front of her. Huh. That was Nicolo. 

Fuck, they have to pay before they can leave.

Joe’s already getting up and pulling on his jacket while still talking and giving Nile a look that is vaguely reminiscent of when they left the church in France all those months ago— _5 minutes or I’m leaving you._

Fuck. Right. Action now, shock later.

“Joe, go.” He stills for a half second, confusion obvious, “I’ll deal with the bill. I can find a hotel, take the car and go.”

Joe nods and is out the door still talking on the phone to Genevieve, fishing out the keys to the car they rented from his jacket as he basically runs from the restaurant. A waiter hurries over and Nile tries flashing a reassuring smile, “Emergency with his SO. Could I get the check please?”

She collapses back into the chair as the waiter walks away, once again boneless under the magnitude of what Maria just sent them.

They just found Nicolo.

They found Nicolo because of some marine biologists.

They found Nicolo because of some marine biologists and a stupid looking octopus.

Nile starts to giggle and if the other patrons at the breakfast place weren’t side-eying her before they are now. She doesn’t really find it in herself to care at the moment.

She takes out her own phone and quickly taps out a message, _hey are you in england right now?_

Her phone starts ringing immediately, Booker speaking the moment she picks up, “Are you alright?”

“I’m good,” she laughs again and really should be caring more about saying all this in public but screw it, “I think we found Nicolo? I told Joe to leave cause we were at breakfast and I think I might be slightly in shock?”

There’s just silence on the other end.

“Booker?”

“You two actually found Nicolo.”

“In terms of chances being really really likely, yeah. We’ve got coordinates and a video that, based on Joe’s reaction, looks like the coffin matches?”

And- ah. Yep. Nile understands none of those words that Booker is now shouting but he sounds happy.

“Where are you? I’m picking you up.”

Nile looks down at the receipt that has somehow appeared on her table, with no conscious memory of handing the waiter cash to pay for everything and reads off the address. Booker hums in assessment, “Alright, give me 30 minutes. I’ll even bring a extra helmet this time.”

Nile smiles, ending the call with a laugh and confirmation that she’ll be on the look out for Booker and his death-bike.

The same waiter from before comes over, wanting to check again if everything was alright and Nile laughs and smiles. This woman is getting a 50 euro tip, even if it’s the most non-subtle and American thing she could do. Today’s a good day.

“It’s all good, I’ve got a friend coming to pick me up. Odd question though, do y’all have champagne?”

-

Against all odds, they did have champagne and were willing to sell a bottle to the strange American woman at 11am in the morning on a Wednesday.

—

Booker had laughed when he pulled up to the breakfast place, catching sight of Nile and the champagne.

“You know as the resident French person” he says, working to pop the bottle open now that they’ve reached what has to be a safehouse in an apartment a little ways off of Canery Wharf. “I should be saying something about real champagne and the La Champagne”

“Mmm.” Nile replies, looking around the apartment and finding herself drawn to the book shelf which is one of the few populated areas within the place- as far as she can tell the apartment otherwise gives off the same vibe as a fancy hotel- all nice furniture, no personal belongings. “But do you actually care about that?”

“Nope. That’s pretty low on my list of things I care about.”

“Sounds about right—Is that a first edition _Don Quioxte_?”

The champagne bottle pops open and Booker curses a bit before pouring the overflow into two glasses, looking up after a second. “Yeah- Andy likes giving gifts.”

He walks over and offers one of the glasses and Nile takes it, still looking through the book collection. She gives Booker a unbelieving look, “Andy—cold, hard, ‘I lead an army of three’ Andy—likes to give gifts?”

“Likes receiving them too, you should see her cave of treasures where she and Quynh store their stuff. Apparently the fastest way to a 6000 year old immortal’s heart is actually through thoughtful gifts.” Booker sits on the couch and motions at the shelf, “Most of those are from her over the years, once she and Quynh realized my last name was more than a little ironic.”

Nile abandons the bookshelf and ends up joining Booker on the couch, sipping on her champagne. “I can’t picture it.”

“Well stick around and you’ll be on the receiving end once the Boss figures out what your preferences are.”

Nile laughs but realizes she hadn’t really thought about that. Had never really given much thought about what after finding Nicolo would entail, she was caught up on the certainty they would find him.

“I guess I have to figure that out now, huh?”

Booker raises an eyebrow, “Figure what out exactly?”

“What happens next, if we’ve found Nicolo. Like, I’m assuming the guy will need some time to adjust. Joe probably wants to sell the boat and not be on another one for several hundred years. So I guess I’m hanging out with you all for the foreseeable future?”

Booker frowns, putting his glass down. “You change your mind on how you felt about joining the team?”

“No.” Nile answers truthfully, “but my previous purpose of help one immortal find their immortal husband in the ocean just became obsolete so.”

“Nile, I’ve got a question- what would you want to do, if anything was possible?”

She laughs at that, thinking about how her last year of immortality has been that questions chased around by restrictions and conditions and put off by an immediate goal to work towards.

“Honestly, if I could, I’d go back to Chicago.”

Booker doesn’t immediately wince or look like he’s having a repeat of their last conversation that went in the direction of family. Instead he levels Nile with a even look and crosses his arms, speaking only after a moment. “What would you need to make that happen?”

“Uh. Someway to convince the US Military and everyone I know I got honorably discharged, instead of being marked MIA. Believable cover story about why I don’t have a scar after nearly dying, though that could probably be done pretty easily comparitively? Not being immortal would help so I didn’t have to leave again in a decade.”

“What if that was a possibility? Not being immortal.”

Nile stops, turning to actually look at Booker, who’s pointedly not looking back at her now but at the wall ahead of him. “What?”

Booker still steadfast refuses to look over, “Let’s say, for argument purposes, I haven’t actually be around London so much over the last year for a mission or time off. Let’s say instead I was approached and started collaborating with someone to look into if our ‘gift’ could be studied for the sake of improving modern medicine and ideally, if there was a way to revoke said gift if desired.”

Nile’s gaping now, putting her glass aside. “You’re serious?”

“It’s not a done deal, it’s looking into it as a possibility.” Booker sighs, untangling his arms from where he’s had them crossed at his chest, “I don’t know how long it would take either- if it is possible- but I’m meeting with a potential company that seems like the best shot for medical breakthroughs later today with my collaborator.”

He gets up and grabs his glass, heading over to the apartments luxuriously empty kitchen to dump the rest of the champagne and place the glass into the sink. Nile waits, asking only after Booker has stepped away from the sink again. “Why though?”

Booker shrugs, coming back to sit next to her on the couch. “Similar reasons to yours for the most part. Don’t get me wrong, I love Andy and Quynh and will probably continue to die for them several times over but… I don’t see the world they do. And I don’t want to live to be Andy’s age, ever. I want some control over that.”

“You’d give it up, then?”

Book glances over at her, and she can see him turning his words over behind his eyes before he settles on the answer. “To level with you kid, none of us know why this happens- and if there is a greater purpose or logic to it, I think there was a mix up somewhere. Andy and Quynh? They’ll save the world some day, if they haven’t already done so already. I can’t speak for Joe and Nicolo or the state they’ll be in once Nicolo’s out but I can make an educated guess that they’re trees from the same forest as Andy and Quynh.”

Booker looks down at his hands and taps his fingers against his leg, “I’m not a warrior like they all are, hell, I was a bookbinder.”

Booker looks up again and shrugs, “Who knows, if there’s an actual purpose to all of this, maybe it’s that I’m the guy who asks questions like this so that you get to go home in the end. Happy endings for everyone.”

“Sounds too good to be true.” Nile counters, “But immortality sounded just as impossible before Andy picked me up.”

“We already have the benefit of working with strange odds.” Booker smiles slightly, flashing his teeth. “If you’re interested, come with me to this meeting in a few hours? Meeting aside, I think you’ll want to talk to the guy I’ve been collaborating with, he might be able to help you with some of those other problems you mentioned. He owes me as it is and this sounds like a good trade-off.”

“So what you’re saying, if I’m getting all of this correctly and this isn’t some sort of fever dream, is that I might have a real shot at going back to my family.” Nile says eventually.

“Yep.” Booker responds easily.

“Booker? Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet kid until we’ve got a full solution, but in the meantime, I’m hoping it works out as well.”

—

There’s a black car waiting outside for them, and Nile can tell just from a glance that it’ll be the most expensive car she’s ever ridden in. Booker gives her one last back glance, “Final check: no phone, no identification, no cards?”

“Only got a pocket-knife on me.” Nile answers, “Should I ditch that too?”

“Hell no.” Booker sighs, pulling the car door open, “But I have learned it does pay to be a paranoid bastard, just in case.”

He slides into the car and Nile follows, nodding as she sees the only other occupant of the car’s back area, and noticing immediately that the driver’s area has been walled up so that the occupants in the back are isolated from being overheard. Fancy.

The previously sole occupant, a black man in a very expensive looking suit, lifts a hand in greeting and smiles, speaking with a very formal British accent. “Ah, Ms. Freeman, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be making your acquaintance.”

Nile freezes and besides her Booker sighs.

The man’s smile drops and he looks between the two of them, “She doesn’t know?”

“Not quite-” Booker starts, “Nile, James Copley. Copley, Nile. He’s the one who helped me find out the status of the Marine’s investigation and been keeping me informed on that front.”

Nile relaxes slightly but still gives Copley a once-over, “Should I be concerned he knows about me?”

Mr. Copley answers that before Booker can, “Mr. Booker has made it abundantly clear that a condition of our collaboration is that none of my activities should directly or indirectly bring attention or harm to any of his fellow associates.”

“And that is enforced how…?”

“With the knowledge that I will kill him if such a breach of confidence happens.” Booker answers simply, “And he knows enough about me to take that seriously.”

Mr. Copley eyes shift from Booker to Nile and the man shrugs, “I knew the situation I was getting into when I approached him.”

“Right. So why do you know about us and how did you get access to my records?” Nile asks, leaning forward slightly.

“A full introduction might help. James Copley, former CIA, current freelancer. I became aware of Mr. Booker and his team 9 years ago when they did a job for me in Surabaya. Fantastic job, they were the best contractors I had ever worked with. They were the best everyone I knew had ever worked with as well. Something about that stuck with me and I started looking into them a bit more, eventually my passing interest turned into something more serious when I found a mention of a mercenary group who had created a notable hitch in the CIA’s invasion effort in 1961. There was a photo taken of a man then that could plausibly be identified as the same contact I had with the Surabaya group.”

Nile sits back again, crossing her arms. “So you chased after the idea of an impossible group of mercs for what, a fun side hobby? What’s the real reason?”

Besides her, Booker lets out a chuckle from where he’s looking out the window as Nile and Copley talk, “I told you she was quick.”

Mr. Copley exhales a disbelieving laugh before speaking, “You were right on that. It started out as a passing interest, then my wife got sick. ALS. When I put it together that I might be dealing with something exceeding current medical technology or theory, it became serious. I approached Mr. Booker the first time a few years before she passed.”

Nile glances over at Booker, who remains silent and she looks back at Mr. Copley. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. There’s nothing that can be done to help her now, but maybe the gift you and your associates possess could save someone else. Mr. Booker has been generous enough to hear me out and look into the possibility that a modern company could figure out how your immortality manifests and if that knowledge could lead to advances in our understanding of medicine and care.”

“So that’s why you’re here. And you think this company we’re talking to has a shot at this?”

“They’re the best in the market over the last 5 years for medical innovation and pharmaceutical practices in the EU.” Mr. Copley answers and Nile nods.

She nudges Booker’s arm to make sure she has his attention, “And what sold you on them?”

Booker doesn’t look away from the window but she can see his eyes glance to her in the reflection of the glass, “They put out a cancer drug out on the market last year that would have increased my son’s lifespan by 20-30 years. The market standard at the time was 5 years for that particular type of cancer.”

Alright, that’s a compelling argument.

Booker turns away from the window as the car begins to slow to a stop, “Ready to see what odds we’ve got?”

Nile nods and Booker exits the car, holding the door open for Nile and Mr. Copley. Nile takes a second to look up at the skyscraper before them, craning her neck to take in the full height of the tower before looking forward to where Booker is walking towards the doors, pulling them open and exposing the large steel sign bolted into the lobby with Merrick Pharmaceuticals fashionably cut out from the material.

Booker makes eye contact with Nile and nods his head towards the lobby, she smiles slightly in response and follows the invitation.

Nile walks inside.

—

_Hey, I’m praying more than anything that it was Nico and you’ve finally found him._   
_Booker was in town so I’m just staying with him and I know you two are probably going to need_   
_a lot of time to adjust so I can stay with B for a while and figure something out past that._   
_[fingers crossed emoji] [heart]_   
_[2:13 pm BST]_

_Nile. Azizti, it was him._   
_We’re docking in a few hours, come home and we’ll figure everything out_   
_then. He wants to meet you- both of you._   
_[4:37pm BST]_

  
_Nile?_   
_[8:05 pm BST]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> D:
> 
> I understand if many of the comments for this chapter are just "I TRUSTED YOU WTF." I promise everything ends happy but uh. plot twist.
> 
> Todays recs are:
> 
> [Lights Out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26817253/chapters/65423833) by Avelera. Another *chefs kiss* fic in my opinion. Op has been a favorite author of mine through several fandoms and this is just. this is real good. Nicky has amnesia. Nicky thinks he's a crusader who's arrived at the door step of Jerusalem. Andy, Booker, and Joe are currently dealing with that in Rome, 2008. It's got moments of pure hilarity tempered by some really deep and heavy mental journeys on loss and understanding the world. Go read it.
> 
> [Explaining is Losing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067066/chapters/66087190) by Sixthlight. The premise is: "Some days you find yourself having sex with your academic nemesis in a storage closet and that’s just how it is." I will leave it at that, my personal fav of it was academic enemies to lovers who both realize the other guy isn't as bad as he made himself out to be...
> 
> [Unearthed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744306) by merle_p. This is great. It's basically, Joe tries denying writing sad poetry, Nicky has to troll some historians to get the source material, and over all it's got a mood to it that just vibes. Fun, cute read. would definitely recommend.
> 
> Ok, I have to actually get ready for work now. Sorry for leaving you all with uh... this for the next week! Love you!


	11. [Dialect]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **DID YOU READ CHAPTER 10? THIS IS PART 2 OF A DOUBLE UPDATE. DONT READ THIS CHAPTER 1ST ITLL JUST BE CONFUSING**
> 
> See you all next week!
> 
> Also, this chapter is best read if you minimize your browser so that it's more like reading a phone conversation. I did not have time to format it the way i wanted. Or read it on your phone? that might work better?
> 
> Either way. it's a phone conversation.

On a serious note, should I be concerned you found us?

Nah, your ship manifests and id were done by someone   
good enough to look mundane if you don’t know what to look for.  
I just happen to know what to look for.

Hm. Alright.

You do realize you could always ask though, if you needed something made up.

I wasn’t sure, I’ll keep that in mind.  
Thank you Sebastien.

Of course.

* * *

Quynh says hi

?   
Doesn’t she have a phone?

She wasn’t sure if she should get your number from someone else  
Or if you’d answer

Ah. I say hi back.

Message sent.

Should I give her your number?

Sure. I don’t text much though.  
Thank you sebastien.

About that.  
Any chance I could get you to use ‘Booker’?  
Its just a personal preference.

Yes, I can do that.  
Sorry about using the wrong name.

It’s fine, it’s not like we talked long enough for me to ever correct it.

* * *

So are we going to talk about the fact you could have been talking to Nicolo since the 1800s?  
I’m not going to pretend that this didn’t apply to me or that immortal dream magic bullshit just likes Nile better.

1\. Thank you for not doing this in front of Nile  
2\. No. We’re not, because neither of us knew it was a possibility and  
I’ve got enough regrets before adding on hypothetical situations

What would you had me do? Force you to join up with me to find Nicolo?  
Trade one life of forced service for another? How well would that have gone?

1\. Yeah no shit.  
2\. I don’t know? Asked?   
Maybe we could have figured it out sooner if we had interacted at all.

Booker. That wasn’t going to happen.  
Mostly because of me.  
I don’t know how much of my mental state you got from those dreams  
but I wasn’t in a collaborative mood.

It’s done. You can’t live this long and fixate on ‘what ifs’  
It will literally drive you insane.

I don’t blame either of us for how it’s ended up, let’s just move on.

Fine. But if you two do need anything, even if it’s just paperwork  
In less time than what your usual source can get you  
You let me know.  
If I can help, please ask me to help.

Fine.

* * *

Can you text Nile?

Sure, why?

It was her brother’s bday. She thinks her family is going to catch on now  
Since she hasn’t been in contact.

She took it really hard.

Fuck. Yeah. I’ll figure something out.

Thank you, Booker.

Yeah, thank you for letting me know.

* * *

[Link attachment]  
Listen to the fucking podcast buddy, it’s totally the museum that  
created the fake and put it up for display.

Wallahi, Booker. It’s because they actually lost the real one years ago.  
I don’t see why you’re not getting this.

BECAUSE THAT ENTIRE THEFT WAS A JOKE?  
WHO’S MOTIVATION TO STEAL A PAINTING IS ITALIAN NATIONALISM??

YOU SERIOUSLY UNDERESTIMATE HOW STRANGE PEOPLE ARE. GIVE IT ANOTHER 300 YEARS.

Nile is telling me to chill and asking if we’re still debating the ‘painting thing’

It’s because she knows I’m right.

No you’re both being idiots - Nile

Betrayed. And here I thought we had the new immortal team energy.

Ha!

* * *

Hey I need to know the next time you all are on shore leave.

Good morning to you too Booker, are the ship manifests not accurate enough?

Ha. But actually this is serious.  
Nile’s mom found out.

Ah.

What are you thinking?

Tell her the day before shore leave so she’s got whatever options  
she needs cause based on how the bday went I don’t think she’s going to take this well

But I also don’t want to hide it from her.

I can cut this route short, 2 days from now?  
That way you could tell her tomorrow.

Thank you, I know this cuts into your search but

No, it’s important.   
Thank you for letting me know.  
I might try and find something to take her mind off of it  
On shore leave if she’s feeling up to it.

Honestly, that’d make me feel better  
I feel bad just dropping this one her without being able to do anything about it.

You told me. That’s doing something about it.

* * *

Thank you for distracting Nile, she said you went to a museum?

She told you about the painting?

…yeah.

What ever you do don’t let Andromache and Quynh know.

I mean do you want it back?  
Because their solution would probably be steal it.

No I think we can wait on that, maybe later.  
Painting is a poor comparison to the subject matter.

Fair.

* * *

Hey, Nile knows she’s not expected to just leave right? She’s got a place with us  
for however long she wants to stay and Nicolo really wants to meet her. And you, btw.  
[4:56 BST]

BOOKER WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU TWO GO?  
[3:17 BST]

[37 missed calls]

[1 call received]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am actually trying to get ready for work while posting this so no recs for this chapter.


	12. Sabir

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. Hello y'all.
> 
> Obviously, dropped off the edge of the earth for a while, we had some home maintenance issues, I had a longstanding migraine, my country had the most stressful election in my living memory and thankfully ended up with the wannabee dictator now losing for the 8th time this month as counts are finalized, oh and I got queerbaited back into supernatural just to be let down one last time like many others. It's been an experience.
> 
>  ** _First off: Content warning for medical torture and imprisonment in this chapter friends._**
> 
> Second, Thanks to [Avelera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/pseuds/Avelera) for talking fiction with me the last few weeks it's been a blast and did help me work through a problem scene I was having. Eternal gratitude and love to [Ongreenergrasses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ongreenergrasses/pseuds/ongreenergrasses) for one, the writing sprint and getting me writing this fic again and two, letting me come into your inbox with "i don't- i don't know what my characters are doing and i need a second opinion please help" and being very very very wonderful and helpful in figuring out if i was writing something i was intending to be writing. Everyone say thank you to ongreenergrasses. But actually. Say thank you.

> _**Sabir** —The Mediterranean Lingua Franca or Sabir was largely based on Italian and Provençal. This language was spoken from the 11th to 19th centuries around the Mediterranean basin, particularly in the European commercial empires of Italian cities (Genoa, Venice, Florence, Milan, Pisa, Siena) and in trading ports located throughout the eastern Mediterranean rim._

Nile can’t stop tapping her foot against the leg of the chair she’s sitting in.

She’s conscious of it, knowing that it’s between that or clicking her fingers on top of the table and making her nervousness visible to everyone around them. She can’t pinpoint why but ever since they walked into the penthouse to meet with Steven Merrick, youngest pharmaceutical CEO, (etc. etc. etc.) she’s felt like a target in someone’s cross-hairs. Maybe it’s because if she plays “read the room” with herself she’s one of three black people in the nearby area in a sea of otherwise white faces staring back at her, with her, Copley, and one very bored looking security guard standing behind a man that Nile can only guess is the chief security officer being it for racial diversity. Maybe it’s because she’s one of only two women in the entire penthouse office area, the other being the doctor who had introduced herself as Kozak when they had all sat down. Everyone Nile had passed by since they stepped out of the elevator had been a guy, from the scattering of security personnel to the office workers fluttering around in the background. She knows that lots of corporations are very skewed towards male dominated upper management but this just feels… weird.

Like there’s a piece of the picture here she’s missing.

Besides her Booker hasn’t made any indication that he’s equally nervous or on edge, if anything he sounds tired after verbally going back and forth with Merrick about the general gist of what he’s proposing- That immortal people do exist and could be negotiated with to come to a partnership for the benefit of everyone. Merrick looks mostly unconvinced.

“Look, do any of you have a knife?”

Nile snaps her attention back to the conversation at Booker’s words and raises an eyebrow at the question. Merrick calls forth the head of security (Keene?) who reluctantly hands over an assisted open blade, hesitating before he flips it around and offers it to Booker handle first. Booker pauses for a moment and nods, “How about we cut all the talking and just give a demonstration?”

Merrick and Kozak look intrigued and Nile’s stomach drops as Booker cleanly pulls the blade across his palm, wincing slightly but keeping his hand open so everyone around the table can clearly see the cut open and well with blood. Booker passes his thumb over the still open cut to push the blood away and Merrick and Kozak freeze as they watch the skin knit itself back together. “I could do a bigger injury and demonstrate the same effect but you don’t seem like the type to want blood on your floor.”

“What are you seeing?” Merrick asks, his eyes not leaving the now-healed skin on Booker’s palm. 

The doctor beside him is similarly enraptured and her response sets Nile further on edge, “The next Nobel Prize.”

Keene however isn’t looking at Booker anymore but over past Booker’s shoulder, making eye contact and then nodding. Nile twists slightly, pretending to be looking at Booker’s palm and catches movement in the corner of her eyes. One of the office workers in the room has paused and nods in response to Keene and Nile doesn’t get why the head of security-

“So this ability works with death as well, it can heal injuries that would otherwise be a lost cause?”

-would be silently communicating with an office worker-

“Yes, but those take a lot longer to heal from. It’s more like I can’t die permanently then I’m impervious to death-”

-unless they aren’t an office worker.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

“Booker.”

Nile breaks into the conversation and Booker stops talking immediately turning to look at her before scanning the room himself.

She can see the moment it clicks for him, his hand loosening on the knife he’s holding into a grip he can maneuver easily and the new tension in his face as he sweeps over the suddenly too close and too still group of office workers and identified security personnel in the room. The real tell is that Keene’s got his hand on his gun and has started drawing it since Nile spoke, Booker still gets a word in. “You motherfuc-”

Several things happen at once:

Keene draws and two shots ring out as Booker slumps back into his chair from where he was starting to rise.

Nile pushes away from her chair and pulls Copley down with her, taking cover under the edge of the table as she does so. She kicks out her chair and the closest security person stumbles as it collides into his legs, giving Nile time to pull out the switchblade she brought with her. She rolls, eyes set on clearing the distance between where she is and with Booker’s slumped form, and disengages the blade, lodging it in the shoulder of one of the men who’s closed in on Booker.

Next to her, the other security guard also cries out as Booker’s hand darts out and slashes the borrowed knife across the man’s throat. Booker pushes away from his chair and sends another man stumbling before ducking down and pull-

A loud bang from behind her and Nile-

  
-Nile wakes up gasping for breath on the floor and is rewarded with roughly having her arms pulled behind her and a gun shoved next to her face. Booker is being held down by three men and struggling, his actions only getting more violent as he catches sight of Nile also being apprehended.

“I think that was quite enough of a show to prove your point.” Merrick says, giving a small clap and coming around from the other side of the table. “And you were kind enough to bring along someone else with your unique talents.”

Booker stills, “Look. Whatever you’re planning from here on out would be better with with someone cooperating, right? Let her go, let her walk out the door and I will do whatever you want me to do. Medical samples, stress testing, whatever. Just let her walk out of here.”

Merrick pauses and looks between Booker and Nile, who’s now being pulled off the floor and held securely by two more men (not that she doesn’t also start thrashing-) and back at Booker. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“I just had not one but two holy grails walk into my office, and you think I’d just let one of them walk away again?” Merrick continues, “Especially if they could walk right into the hands of the competition? No, I’m not letting either of your out of my sight for the time being.”

Booker starts struggling again and Nile follows his lead, trying to throw off the men holding her in place. There’s a jab to her neck and Nile manages to slam her head into the man nearby but her limbs are already feeling like concrete. Distantly she can hear Copley’s voice speaking out, “This isn’t what we-”

Then? Nothing.

—

Nile wakes up chained to a cold stainless steel table.

All things considered, the fact she’s managed to put off a panic attack today given everything else that’s happened is a success not a failure. The restraints really aren’t helping her feel in control of her breathing though.

“Hey, Chérie. Chérie, I need you to look at me.” 

Nile turns her head, her gaze falling on Booker as she struggles to suck in another breathe. He’s also tied to a table, shirtless (did they also- yeah, they removed my shirt- the thought is almost funny compared to the intensity of every other thought racing in her mind.) and is maintaining eye contact with her once she’s looking his way and holding himself still. “Chérie, I need you to breathe. Take a second and just try and breathe with me. In-” shaky breathe and Nile tries to hold in, “Out-” she exhales on a sob “In-” Booker doesn’t look away from her “Out- see, it’s going to be ok. I promise you that it’s going to be ok.”

“I’m not feeling very optimistic about that.” She struggles to say and her voice wobbles as she does so, Booker nods and exaggerates his breathing a few more times so Nile and try and pace herself against his steady breaths. “I know, Chérie. But I’m a paranoid bastard, remember?”

Nile stills.

“And right now, it feels like this will be an eternity, but if you go along with what I say I promise you I will do everything I can to get you out of this will as little harm done as possible.”

Nile takes a deep breath and wishes she could wipe away the few stray tears the collected during her panic. “Ok. What do I do?”

“Don’t give these guys anything. Not your name, or any personal information. If they ask you about anything, talk about me instead. Literally nothing from my past can be used against me at this point, I’m too old for that. Right now we just have to out-wait this assholes. That’s all that you need to worry about doing, ok?”

Nile swallows and nods and takes another steadying breath.

Booker gives an approving nod and gives a small smile, “Just follow my lead, Chérie.”

The door to the room clicks open and Merrick’s head doctor steps inside along with a guard. “I see you’ve both woken up now. Fantastic, let’s begin.”

Nile sets her gaze, blinks a few times and tries to look bored.

_Alright, Freeman, let’s hurry up and wait._

—

The first part of Merrick’s experiments aren’t that bad comparatively. If Nile closes her eyes she can pretend she’s getting a yearly physical and the doctor just kinda sucks at their job. The pinch of needles and blood being drawn could be a lot worse, and Nile just keeps repeating to herself _just wait it out, just wait it out, just wait it out._

It’s when Kozak makes a approving noise and says “Alright, let’s try something else.” and Nile opens her eyes to find Kozak holding a scalpel that Nile knows she won’t be able to keep pretending.

Kozak is already advancing towards her and Nile trashes against the restraints holding her as Kozak lines up the scalpel over Nile’s chest, “Stop moving or I’ll have to repeat myself-”

Booker’s voice is loud and clear as Kozak’s hand hovers over Nile’s exposed skin, centimeters from cutting in. “You don’t want to do that doc, she’s new and the healing factor for her is a lot less stable than for me. I’ve died thousands of times, if you want a reliable test subject you should be dissecting me.”

His voice is level, despite it’s volume and some of the words must have resonated because the doctor turns and Nile shudders as the woman’s attention turns to Booker. “Explain.”

“Immortality take some time to settle in and sometime if you push a new one too hard in the first few decades they’ll come back from a fatal wound a handful of times and then stop healing.” Booker says, calm as a clear day, like he’s explaining something he’s said or heard millions of times before, “She’s a lot more valuable to you alive and that means if you want to run this gambit correctly, you should choose your test subjects carefully.”

“That’s a very generous piece of information. How can I know it’s accurate?”

Booker’s eyes meet Nile’s for only a moment before returning his attention to the doctor.

He’s bluffing, she realizes numbly. Everything Joe and Andy have told her so far made it clear that she can’t die, won’t even have to really worry about that possibility for a couple centuries at the earliest. But Merrick’s people don’t know that, nor do they have any point of reference to dispute it.

If anything Booker is more vulnerable than she is and he’s trying to paint the target on his own chest.

“You can’t, not without irreversibly killing her and at that point you’ll have to explain to Merrick how you managed to kill 50% of his collection of super healing anomalies who aren’t supposed to be killable.” Booker says, “Plus of the three people in the room right now, I’m the one with 200 years of experience of our condition. You can either make use of that knowledge or you can fumble around in the dark just to spite me for wanting to prevent you from killing my companion. Your pick, Doctor.”

He’s rewarded with a scalpel slicing into his chest and Nile flinches, looking away as he grunts and his voice pitches into a whine with the pain. The doctor cuts deeper and Booker a noise between chocking and a gurgle and goes silent. The doctor keeps cutting, pausing occasionally to just watch his body heal. After a while the woman straightens up, Booker’s low moan follows a moment later as his body heals enough without the repeated damage to allow him to come back into consciousness. The doctor removes her gloves and grabs a clipboard nearby, “I appreciate the information, I’ll be sure to note it down that tests run on your companion should maintain a lower level of intensity, preferably to either collaborate any finding based off your own reactions or as a back up.”

Booker groans and jerks as Kozak picks up her scalpel again, finding a new section of interest to cut into the man.

Nile strains against her restraints, and Booker catches her gaze again though it’s hazy with pain. He shakes his head and Nile can understand the message, even if its followed by him promptly passing out again. _Don’t try and get her attention, Nile._

Nile slumps back and tries to ignore the sound of Booker cycling between painfully aware consciousness and an indistinguishable mix of blacking out and death.

She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t want to be witnessing this and wondering when the doctor will turn and decide it’s her turn.

She wants Andy and Quynh to burst through the doors and get her and Booker out. She wants to burn this place to the ground. She wants to grab Dr. Kozak’s scalpel and plunge it into the woman’s chest so she stops torturing Booker.

She wants this to stop.

She wants Joe, she realizes belatedly.

She wants to be sharing a deck to stargaze, or repeating verb conjugations back at him and having him correct her accent. She wants to nag him into eating some food or actually getting some sleep and she wants to go back to reciting ancient phrases in Zeneize again under her breathe knowing they’ll bring Nicolo comfort while they look. She wants to meet Nicolo. She wants to hear him speaking to her without translating the sounds through water. She wants to see him smile or laugh or walk around. She wants to roll her eyes and look away when he and Joe finally get to kiss each other after centuries and probably become immediately inseparable and insufferable. She wants to know what happens next with them, all of them, the lost one of the group found and knowing that it means something new for all of them. She wants to go home.

Fuck, she wants to go home.

—

Thin pale hands wrap around the fabric of a hoodie and Nile can see Joe, shouting into the phone, staying within view, always, but still animated- and that must mean- pale hands shift now and Nile sees Nicolo’s face catching in a reflection of glass- Nicolo, Nicolo, Nicolo.

He’s chanting in a whisper, strong and steady as a prayer despite how scratchy his voice is. She recognizes the Zeneize she’s mumbled to herself for the last few months being whispered back to her, _we’re looking for you, we’re going to find you,_ etc.

_Stiamo venendo, bravi couri, stiamo venendo._

—

Nile wakes up to Booker shouting.

“I fucking told you to be careful with her, do you see how long it takes her to come back compared to me? Is that enough of a _fucking demonstration_ for you?”

Everything hurts, and Nile groans as she moves her head towards the sound of Booker’s voice which has been joined by Kozak’s short clipped tones. Nile blinks at the light and barely catches the end of the doctors final statement on “that being enough for today” before the woman storms off and Booker is left looking Nile up and down from his side of the lab, “Book, what-”

“You alright, kid?”

Compared to the raging force of his shouting a moment ago, his voice is gentle as a creek now. Nile shakes her head and groans again as her limbs shift from numbness to a burning sensation like they had all fallen asleep and been moved at the same time. Kozak had been finishing up some sort of test on Booker and had turned to Nile, saying something about checking reactions and then everything else after that was fuzzy. “What happened? Did I die?”

“Yeah, she wasn’t paying attention and nicked something. You bleed out, a lot faster than it took you to come back.”

“I don’t—I dont want to do that again. It hurts a lot.”

“I know, Chérie, I know. You just have to hang on for a little while longer. I’m so sorry you had to experience that.” Booker says, slipping in and out of French and Nile’s brain lags as she tries to keep up. It takes her another second to remember what she’d seen, during that flash between dead and not dead.

“Book- Booker, I think he found him.”

Booker just nods and Nile realizes he must already know, with how many time Kozak has killed him in however long they’ve been here. Booker gives her a small smile and Nile feels if anything he’s trying to reassure her rather than actually finding something to smile about. “They’re looking for us. That was A on the phone with J. We’re not going to be here long, Nile, I promise.”

Nile feels heavy, both with a sense of relief that this is going to end, sooner rather than later even if they’re still stuck her in the moment and with her own sense of exhaustion. “Can you just talk about something random, I don’t want to just be thinking about when she’s coming back.”

“Sure. I’m real glad where ever they are it’s warm and not underwater or in some part of the world that gets snow. Small blessings. That’s honestly been a reoccurring thought in my mind since this whole situation started.”

“Why’d you go to Russia in the first place?” Nile asks, closing her eyes and relaxing against her restraints so they’re not digging into her skin and she can pretend she’s somewhere else. “You really dislike it there.”

“Didn’t have a choice. I was a document forger by unofficial trade and I got caught. They gave me the choice between marching in Napoleon’s army or prison. I made the mistake of choosing the army.”

“Were you any good at it? Counterfeiting, not the army.”

Booker scoffs, “I’m still good at it. Who do you think is in charge of making sure the seniors have things like IDs? Have you ever seen A use a smart phone? Q’s a lot more tech literate for sure but not by that much.”

Nile giggles softly, picturing Andy with a smart phone and looking completely out of her league trying to figure the device out, “Did you ever do any art forgeries?”

“No.” Booker says glumly, “I’ve thought about it, but I literally haven’t had enough time under the bosses schedules to ever pursue it.”

“You should do it,” Nile says, opening her eyes and glancing over at Booker. “You could take a decade off and just ‘discover’ a long-lost impressionist painting or something.”

Booker chuckles, “Yeah well, seeing as how this is going, I don’t think I’ll be short on time after this.”

Nile raises an eyebrow and Booker sighs, “Consequences of actions, kid. If I had just walked myself into this situation it probably could be written off as a very very stupid mistake. But I brought you along and that means twice the work to fix it. They’re not going to be able to trust me to have their back for a while, and I wouldn’t either. Which, if you end up reconsidering the offer to be part of the team, I guess there will be an opening for you.”

“That’s not funny.”

“C’est la vie. Sometimes humor’s all you have left.”

“How about an art class instead?”

It’s Booker’s turn to raise an eyebrow, “What?”

“Art class. Before everything happened to me, I wanted to go to school. That was my end goal. J’s been pretty supportive when I kick the idea around of how I could probably get a degree still and not draw too much attention to myself. You should come take an art class with me and start off your art forgery career.”

“This explains so much about your weirdly comprehensive knowledge of art history.” Booker replies, “I think you just want an excuse to go to one of those big galas if I “discover” a long lost Caillebotte or Degas.”

“It would be fun.”

“It would be a huge security risk.”

“It would be a huge security risk but it would be 100 times more fun than our current situation.”

“Touché.” Booker sighs, “So what you’re suggesting is I learn nothing from this experience and basically once again put us into a spotlight but with art instead of medical torture.”

“Yes.”

“Is your entire generation like this is or are you just weirdly optimistically insane as an individual?”

“J says I’m a delight to have around.”

Booker just starts laughing.

When he finally stops laughing he smiles and leans his head back against the headrest of his table. “Fine. When we get out of this, and if J doesn’t immediately murder me for getting you into this situation, I will take an art class with you.”

“See. At least we can say this was a bonding experience.”

“Chérie, that is probably the most off-base way of describing this situation, no offense.”

Nile yawns and Booker smile softens, “Get some sleep if you can, dying takes all the energy out of you. I promise I’ll be loud if Kozak comes back so you’re not caught unprepared.”

“Thanks, Booker.”

“Bonne nuit et de beaux rêves, Chérie.”

—

Nile dreams of soft clothes and being wrapped in something warm, she dreams of scented lotion and a deep raspy voice humming under his breathe. There aren’t any words she understands but she can tell whoever is singing finds comfort in the song.

There’s the sound of people moving around in the background and the slight rocking beneath her feet.

Nile breathes easy and for a little while feel like it’s going to be alright.

—

They continue this game of sitting around and waiting for rescue for the next day, or two? Interrupted by bouts of torture but Kozak seems far less interested in Nile after her death the day before. 

Just hurry up and wait, after all.

It’s during one of Kozak’s sessions on Booker that the other immortal chuckles and speaks up, even as Kozak is cutting into his flesh again with a scalpel. “Well, Meta, it’s been fun and all but I think it’s time for us to stop playing around.”

Kozak pauses, “What are you talking about-”

The door to the room softly clicks open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by Iscariot - Walk the Moon aka the unofficial Booker theme lol
> 
> Alright we're in the final stretches! Next chapter will be the last chapter of this fic. We are ending it folks. Which also, leaves me mentally screaming I've never finished a long fic before and I've got the final scene down so it's just the in between parts I have to deal with and aahhhhhhhhh
> 
> Anyway. To the best part of this note:
> 
> First rec is emjee's [All that I know is I don't know a thing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27274777?view_adult=true) The summary is: In which Nicky's at seminary because he likes to argue, not because he's becoming a priest, and Joe has missed this essential fact and can't figure out why this future-priest-slash-bartender is flirting with him. (You can imagine how great this is with this premise.)
> 
> Second up is Rupzydaisy's [on the lonely side of the moon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25902193) Booker's still got his exile. 100 years except one day a year. Here's a great story on bridging old hurts and also not totally leaving someone out to dry in a 100 year exile.
> 
> Third: Ligeila's [Cold Feet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26530246/chapters/64666264) in which, before the events of the movie take place.. Booker gets cold feet. I'm a sucker for found family and dealing with the rampage of "we nearly walked into a bad situation" I hope it'll get finished some day and also I adore the Joe and Booker friendship in this.
> 
> That's all for now folks. The end is near but also fall/winter is rough and I'm not going to do a deadline for myself given I'll probably have to miss it with life stuff :( Soon. Hopefully this helps relieve some stress from the last two chapters.


End file.
